


I Remember

by yami0204



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 46
Words: 124,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yami0204/pseuds/yami0204
Summary: Sometimes memory can lead to something both new and familiar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> About 13 years ago, an old high school classmate of my twin brother and mine called us out of the blue. The phone was tossed between my twin and myself until around 5 hours passed and we finally managed to hang up. When we were schoolmates, my brother and I weren't exactly close friends with this guy. We'd been to his house for class projects, we were in plays and musicals together a few times, he invited us to a birthday party once, but we otherwise were just classmates. My brother and I were two grade levels above him, so most of our friends were in our class and were of similar age to us. So when this person neither of us were very close to called us for apparently no reason other than to talk, we were confused but okay with it.
> 
> After that random phone call, we started hanging out with him more. Eventually, we met his girlfriend and watched that woman become his wife. They had children and we would visit them often. It's been... a lot of years now, and we're still incredibly close with this man who randomly called us one cloudy April day just to see what we were up to. It was honestly sweet of him, even though he talked my ear off for far too long about Dungeons & Dragons minutiae. (I love D&D, but I'm not one to talk endlessly about the rules of D&D.)
> 
> And that's why this fic exists now. I was reminded of how this weird long-term friendship between this man, myself, and my twin brother started - through an overlong phone call - and now this fic exists.

Our backs rested against the cool bark of a fallen tree, our shoulders brushing against one another as we sat together peacefully. The youth next to me was engrossed in a book that detailed something called the Tunguska Event, while I was trying to write poetry as I listened to my Walkman, the sound of soft classical music seeping into my ears while we sat quietly together. Every minor shift in our movements was felt acutely between us, like the delicate rustle of leaves as the summer breeze glided by. I had no idea how long we’d been sitting there, with the high summer sun leaving dappled splashes of light upon our bodies as it streamed through the tree branches above us, but it felt somehow like both an eternity and an instant.

It was the first time that I had thought that this was how adults knew who their true love was. Calm and comfortable, without the aggressive rush of emotions that makes teenagers so reckless in their desires. _Yes, this is what they must feel_ , I thought.

Before this, I had engaged in the normal, hurried pace of teenage love, where every emotion was felt forcefully as though my life would end if the relationship wasn’t perfect. Crushes collided with my heart like landslides, swallowing me completely. Unlike all those other fast-paced relationships that I had let flash hot like wildfire, this was completely different. We found each other and felt a connection. We let our affection grow slowly. We were still young, and even in my teenage heart I had the thought of how this would likely never last beyond the summer, yet it all felt very different. Neither of us heralded our relationship with words. It was gestures and glances that led us to where we were at that moment. I liked how slow it was, and that realization was comforting to me.

The younger teen at my side set a marker in his book and placed it on the ground, moving to rest his head against my shoulder. Though my headphones were over my ears, I could see his mouth move as he said my name. I pressed the pause button on the tape player and took off my headphones, dipping my lips down to kiss the top of his head as a reply to the statement I didn’t hear.

“Do you think we should head back, Wirt?” He didn’t look up at me, but instead snaked an arm around my own.

I glanced up at the sky, checking the sunlight that glittered through the leaves. It seemed like it was early afternoon still. “Not unless you want to.”

He made no movement beyond the rise and fall of his body as he breathed. My eyes trailed down his form, from the top of his messy brown curls down to the tips of his muddy shoes. He was the kind of boy that enjoyed the outdoors, the forest and the trees and the thrill of the unknown. His calf-high socks had been white at some point, but now they were gray from the amount of wear they went through daily. His exposed knees from below the frayed edges of his cargo shorts were dirtied from mud and grass and bruises. His shirt was a dingy red to match the rest of his dingy wardrobe, and over that shirt he wore a faded blue utility vest made to hold various camping supplies. He usually wore a fur-lined hat with ear flaps at its sides, but he had set it on the forest floor by the tree trunk while we wasted away the day together. Despite his body looking frail and innocent, he had a roughness to him that only those who knew him well enough would be able to truly assess.

He noticed my gaze and laughed nervously, pulling away from my arm and shoulder. “It’s strange, being out here and not having an adventure.”

The feeling of his warmth pulling away was disheartening, but understandable. It was summer, and staying like that was starting to make us both sweat from the heat of our bodies being so close. “I would much prefer this to adventure. We’ve had way too much adventure.”

He grinned and leaned back against the tree trunk, “Demons and forest spirits and cryptids... That stuff shouldn’t be so normal.”

“It’s way too normal around here,” I said with a laugh. “Having a near-death experience once in my life was enough, I thought, but nope. Not here.”

“Nope, not here!” He laughed with me and we shared this strange moment together. Our lives were so strange at that time. Were there really monsters in the woods? “Anyone touched by the extreme weirdness of the world is bound to end up here eventually, after all.”

“Yeah, it seems like it,” I chuckled. In my memory, all of this seemed true. The world was beautiful and dangerous, with ghosts and monsters everywhere. I think about it now and think how silly it all was. We were so young back then, believing in supernatural things as we did, though the near-death experience was very real. I’ll always remember that one.

The younger teen moved a hand to take up my own, lacing our fingers together gently. His hands were rough and smudged with dirt, but they were always delicate and safe. He pulled my hand to his lips and kissed it. His lips mirrored the roughness of his hands, but were absent of the dirt that dotted the rest of his body.

My hands were never as rough and manly as the hands of other boys. I spent my time indoors mostly, playing music and writing poetry and reading. My interests didn’t require going outside much, yet here I was, in the woods with a boy so close to my age, enjoying the sunlight and the soil and the trees. Birds chirped at us nearby, as though to serenade us in our quiet moments together.

I whispered something in that moment, the words quietly dripping from my lips. My ears never heard the words, but I remember them as though I was saying them out loud right now: “I love you.” I can’t remember if this was the first time that I had said those words to someone like that before, or if it was the first time I had said those words to him, but my heart remembers saying those words and my mind remembers hoping that the boy kissing my fingers had heard those words, too.

Thankfully, he had heard the words, as soft as they were, and he paused in his kissing of my hand. He looked at me with an expression that I could only describe as gorgeous. Even now, though the scene is blurred by time in my mind, I can remember his expression. It was so perfect that I needed to touch his face to make sure that it was real. The hand he had been kissing freed from his gentle grasp and cupped against his cheek. It was soft. His face was soft and round, still carrying with it the plumpness of childhood. I moved my face closer to his and our lips touched lightly in a chaste kiss. It was a paragon of young and innocent love.

When our faces pulled away, he replied with a similarly small “I love you” that the breeze carried to my ears. The words echoed in my mind and I could feel them fall down into my chest, ringing merrily in my heart like a church choir. He loved me, and I loved him.

We kissed again, though he took the initiative this time, humming those same three words against my lips every time they parted for breath. I don’t know how many times we kissed, but it was more times than I had kissed anyone in my life up to that point. Eventually, the heat of the day forced us to maintain our distance for a bit. We didn’t want to part, but the scent of his sweat was clinging fiercely to his usual odor of pine needles and birch bark. I can still taste that scent in my mouth to this day. He was earthy and woody and, for some reason, I loved that scent.

It’s been many years since then, perhaps more than a decade. I don’t remember much from that trip, a family summer vacation in the Pacific Northwest, but I remember the boy I fell in love with that year. I dream of him sometimes, imagining what he looks like now. Is he still fighting monsters in the woods? Are his cheeks still soft and round? Most importantly, I ask myself if he even remembers me anymore. I doubt he does. How many years has it been since that fateful summer? Before we parted ways at the end of summer, I gave him a cassette tape of poetry. Does he still have it?

Age makes a person nostalgic for innocent times long passed, and I suppose that’s where I am now. I hope that he’s doing well out there in the unknown. Even if he doesn’t remember me, I know that I’ll remember him. As I listen to the backup of the tape I gave him, I can remember that one moment in the woods, where we kissed and professed innocent young love to each other. It’s a memory I treasure even now, as an adult. I’ll always remember the boy with the constellation of stars on his forehead, hidden under that curly mop of brown hair and that furry old cap. I’ll remember you, Mason “Dipper” Pines.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should mention that all odd numbered chapters are from Wirt's POV and the even numbered chapters are from Dipper's POV.

We sat next to each other on the roof, watching the sunset bleed fiery colors across the sky. We weren’t supposed to be up there by ourselves, but we did it pretty often. We all did it. When you’re a young teenager in love, the rules of adults seem unimportant compared to the matters of the heart. There was nothing exciting happening at that moment. Something had happened earlier that day, but the memory of it is gone. For this, all that mattered was the pair of us sitting side by side as the sun set before us.

We were holding hands, and I remember that being very important. We were holding hands and everything was serene. Engaging in quiet moments back then was an absolute blessing, because it was very rare in that house. There were so many people and there was always some kind of chaos happening. Monsters or ghosts or aliens. There was always chaos. This memory always stood out to me because it had no chaos at all. His hand was wrapped around mine. I was a little jealous that his hands were larger than mine, but I loved how soft they were. He was poetic and thoughtful, though he sometimes spent too much time trapped in his own thoughts. He was a worrier, but he meant well.

I looked at him as he admired a scene that I was far too accustomed to. Was this the first time I showed him the sunset from up there? It had to have been. The look on his face seemed like the expression of someone who'd never seen a sunset like that before. He was in awe of it, and I was in awe of him. There was an old yet refreshing aura to him, like he was both ancient and new. He liked vintage things, cassette tapes and record players and black-and-white sci-fi movies. He always dressed like he was going to church, in slacks and clean dress shoes and an ironed button-up top. It made him look like he was from a different time period, like a traveler from the past, but he was only a year older than me. I remember the first time I met him, he was wearing a sweater vest and I thought it looked so lame. After a short while, though, I grew to love his sweater vests and his argyle socks and the tinny old music he listened to.

He squeezed my hand as he watched the sunset, and it made me smile. He was whispering words under his breath and I recognized it as poetry. I missed a lot of the words at the time, and I can only remember bits of what he said, but my memory is that it was all beautiful. Or maybe it was just that I thought he was beautiful in the warm, fading light. It was likely a mixture of both.

There was a long moment before he realized that I was watching him, and when he caught my eyes, I looked away and blushed. It always felt like the first time we had looked at each other in that way, even though I know we had glanced at each other like that many times before. How long had we been together by then? We hadn’t ever formalized our relationship, but quietly acknowledged it as mutual. I think of it as my first grown up relationship, even though I was barely a teenager at the time. Even with the occasional butterfly in my stomach, there was always that feeling of calm familiarity whenever I was with him. He was like an old blanket that was warm and inviting no matter what time of the year it is. I liked that about him.

I still like that about him.

We stayed out there as the stars twinkled above us, the last glimmer of sunlight hiding behind the far away cliffs. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into him and we cuddled under the light of the moon. He whispered my name in my ear and I whispered his back. He was taller than me, though not by much, and I liked making myself smaller against him so that I could feel his entire body against me. He muttered something about the moon smiling on us, keeping its light shining down on us so we could be together for longer. I remember that we curled up in a blanket when the wind started to chill, and now I begin to wonder if this was a date. Was it a date?

Oh, yes, I remember now. It was a date. I’d prepared it. I had blankets and pillows up there, and drinks and snacks for if we got thirsty or hungry. We slept up there, on the roof, the moon smiling down at us as the stars flickered behind it. He was so warm, too. I remembered that he smelled like old books and clean linen, even after we'd gone exploring in the woods together. The scent of the forest didn’t cling to him like it always did to me. I kind of regret not showering very much. I was stupid and showered maybe twice a week back then. He must have thought I smelled like a garbage truck.

When the next morning came, we kissed each other as the sun shined on the horizon. They were gentle, sleepy kisses that were punctuated by groans as we tried to get up from where we had slept. Sleeping on a roof is not a great idea, but it seemed romantic to my 13-year-old brain.

 _I can call him_ , I thought. _I have his number, but who knows if it even works anymore_.

I still gave thought to him every now and then, remembering that he was intriguing. We were both young teens, spending the summer away from our homes. We had met in town, I think. It’s hard to remember. I just remember that we became friends very easily, and I remember that lopsided smile of his that crept over his face whenever he was embarrassed. He was cute, and that was the first time I had ever thought of anyone the same gender as me as being cute. He wasn’t the last, of course, but he was definitely the first.

And now I was thinking about him again, so many years later, because I'd found a cassette tape with my name on it while I was clearing my room to move into my first house. This was a big step I was taking as an adult, but digging through ancient history forced all the memories of my youth to flood back to me. For the most part, I picked up an item, felt a twinge of nostalgia, then tossed it into a box without a second thought. This was the first item that made me want to feel those long gone emotions again. Of course, you can’t feel something from that long ago as well as you did when you first felt it. There were many summers of me and my sister running through the forests of Oregon, fleeing from some unspeakable horror that any normal adult would have brushed off as the imagination of children. But it was all real and documented. I remember the fear and the adrenaline and the excitement of it all. It was always a rush.

This dusty memory of that boy, however, was different from most of my other summer memories. It was golden hued and quiet, which was a rarity back then. That first summer in Oregon changed my life into a cascade of impossible scenarios made real, and all the summers following it had that same frantic energy. The summer when I met that cute boy was the only summer that felt like it was a faded dream. I’ve thought back to it and wondered if it was even real, despite photographic evidence and even my own family’s memories of it being real. There were adventures that year, of course, but they seemed so small in comparison to the relationship that budded between me and that boy.

 _His name is Wirt_ , I thought. I couldn't remember if that was his first or last name; it was the only name I ever called him by during that summer. After he had given me this tape, I had to ask my sister if I could borrow her karaoke machine since it had a tape player in it. It was rare for anyone to listen to cassette tapes back then, just as it’s rare now.

I listened to it that evening, after we had seen him and his family off. They drove away from the sunset, towards the darkness of the trees and starlit sky, leaving me to stare in that direction long after the sun had finished its journey below the horizon behind me. I pretended for his sake that I was fine, but I was truly devastated to see him go. Thinking about how it devastated me so much makes me feel like such an idiot now, but young love makes you feel things more intensely, I suppose.

He left, and I felt empty for a long time. So I listened to his tape, my sister leaving me alone with it. I listened to his voice as he recited his poetry. I don’t know how I felt about the poetry back then, but now that I’m listening to it as an adult... it’s pretty bad. It’s definitely the heartfelt musings of a 14-year-old. I’m pretty sure that while I was listening to this young teen’s voice, I felt soothed by it that sad summer evening. Even now, it feels oddly comforting. It’s strange how memories like this can make you feel something even far in the future.

I sighed, listening to the last poem. It told of a boy he found in the woods, blanketed by the roots and branches of a tree. Was this one about me? I felt like I would have remembered a tree trying to eat me, but a lot of things have tried to eat me in my life so it’s hard to know if this was real or a metaphor.

 _Maybe_ , I thought absently, _this was about his sadness over having to leave_.

I shrugged and ejected the tape, putting it back in its container.

 _I have his number_ , I reminded myself. _I can call him_.


	3. Chapter 3

His voice was like a song to my ears. Though time had changed its timbre into something deeper and richer, it held in it the musicality that I remembered from over a decade ago. Though much of its awkward cracking was gone, there was still that familiar nervousness to it that was incredibly endearing. Even across unknown distance, I could tell his voice from any other in the world.

He told me that he had found my old tape of poetry and the scribbled phone number I had written on the track list in the cassette case. When he called it and found that it was no longer my number, he had commenced a grand search to find what my current phone number was just so he could call me and reminisce. If it had been any other person telling me what great lengths they had gone to in order to find me, I probably would have called the police, but my memory of Dipper Pines included memory of him being fiercely intelligent and intensely curious and dauntless in his pursuit of truth. He regaled me with details of how he managed to find me after all this time, and I laughed politely from my end of the phone line.

“You went through all that trouble just to find me?” I shook my head, though he couldn’t see it on his end of the call.

“Well, yeah,” he said slowly, punctuating his words with a nervous laugh. “I always wondered what happened to you after you left, so I guess... this is me finally seeking closure.”

“Closure?” The word clung to my tongue in a way I didn’t entirely enjoy. “Because... we never formalized the end of our relationship?”

“What? N-no, not like...” He sighed heavily, the sound of it crackling in my ear. “Because... s-sometimes I think that it was all just a dream. I wanted to make sure that it all really happened — that you and I really did...”

I couldn’t help but laugh, “I can imagine how you could have thought that. Those days do seem like the most wonderful of dreams. The endless summer sun bathing us in her radiant glow each day as we gave each other delicate kisses beneath an impossibly blue sky while we whispered our proclamations of love to each other! Oh, how the light of youth shimmers and sparkles like fireflies in twilight, comforting and—”

Laughter ended my train of thought. “You’re still a poet!”

“I... um... sometimes?” And by “sometimes” I meant “every day,” as my coworkers would readily attest.

“That’s perfect, Wirt,” Dipper said from across miles between us, but his voice felt so close that I could touch it effortlessly. He was like an apparition in the room with me; his voice was smiling at me from across distance.

Our conversation shifted into what our lives had become after our fateful summer together, and my life felt so boring to his by comparison. Though I had wanted to pursue playing clarinet professionally, it was not meant to be, and the life of a poet is meaningful work but it would have left me destitute. Instead, I pursued my other passion: interior design. Remembering my days in Oregon, I had decided to move to the state, only to end up in a boring job at an equally boring architectural design firm in a fairly boring city. At least the scenery outside the office windows was pleasant and inspiring for my work, with mountains and forests in the distance beyond the city skyline, but like all office work, there were many days of monotony that stifled creativity.

Dipper, on the other hand, told of his continued interest in the supernatural and paranormal, spending half his year in Gravity Falls, to study under his great-uncle Ford, and the rest of his time seeking higher education in his home state of California. He was still having adventures in the wilderness, searching for monsters and fairies and the like. Apparently, on a lark, he had started a podcast to share his supernatural research with the world and his internet radio career was keeping his creative juices flowing all the time, as well as helping pay the bills. He then confessed that the only reason he had found that old cassette tape of mine was because he had finally moved out of his parents’ house and into his own home in Gravity Falls. I wanted to ask him about why he didn’t choose to live in the Mystery Shack, where his great-uncles lived for part of the year, but there was something in his tone when the old tourist trap was mentioned that made me think that perhaps something personal had happened that he wasn’t comfortable explaining to me yet. Instead of pressing him about the issue, I congratulated him on his new home purchase.

“So where in Oregon are you?” He no longer wanted the conversation to be so focused on himself, it seemed. It was understandable that he would want to keep secrets from someone he hadn’t seen in so long.

“I’m in Bend,” I replied, “so I’m not too far from where you are, if you’ve officially moved in now.”

He made an odd noise and I realized that he was nodding instead of replying with words. He laughed, “Yeah. Maybe you could come to visit. I’m having a housewarming party in a couple weeks. Mabel’s idea, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated with a chuckle. His sister always did love having an excuse for a party. “I’d love to go. Give me the date, and I’ll check my calendar.”

We both exchanged addresses, including our emails, and our conversation dipped into lighthearted things. We talked about movies and books, he told me the name of his podcast so I could look into it, and we gushed about some of our favorite new television shows. It was odd, picking back up into a friendship like this. It was almost like there hadn’t been a decade-long gap between our last conversation. We talked so freely that we barely noticed that we had been talking for nearly four hours straight. The sun had long vanished from my windows, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything for dinner yet. Awkwardly, like we had become teenagers again, we each tried to end the conversation, daring the other to hang up first until we both hung up at the same time. I felt a fluttering in my chest that I hadn’t felt for a very long time, and the sensation was exhilarating.

My poor ears were red from holding the phone up to them, switching whenever one became too sweaty, yet they still held within them the ringing of Dipper’s voice. They grasped onto the sound and I let them hang on tightly to it. I didn’t turn on the radio or the television that night. I ate my dinner in the memory of Dipper’s voice in my ears, and slept with my mind dreaming of what he looked like now. I remembered seeing a photograph of one of his great-uncles at our age, fully formed in his adulthood, and I morphed that with what I remembered of Dipper so long ago. It was a pleasing image in my head, and I let that picture live on in my dreams as I slept.

In two weeks, I would see Dipper again for the first time in over a decade.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone was wondering, between myself and my brother, which twin is the Mabel and which is the Dipper, then here is a short tale. My brother visits every Friday. One Friday, he came to my house and he didn't use any of my furniture the whole time. When I asked him why, he said, "The last time I sat on your furniture, my body was covered in so much glitter that I had to vacuum out my car after I got home." That was 3 years ago and he still refuses to sit on my furniture. He's also banned me from wearing a certain pair of jeans if I'm going to be riding in his car because it's like "unicorn dandruff" on his car seat. He just doesn't understand that being covered in sparkles is amazing.

“I can’t believe I invited him to the housewarming party,” I moaned loudly. I hadn’t seen Wirt in well over a decade. This was my first time talking to him in that long, and I invited him to my house!

I looked at the phone in my hand. The screen had already faded to black but I could still feel the lingering warmth from having had the device held up to my ear for so many hours. I didn’t regret calling him. Like back when we were younger, he felt warm and comforting like an old blanket. It was like no time had passed between our last conversation, which should have been more of a shock to me than it felt in that instant. Usually people change exponentially from high school into adulthood, yet he was still that gentle old soul in my sepia memories. I tried to imagine what he looked like now, and all I could think was that he was still the same, simple sweaters and pressed slacks and shined shoes. For some reason, I couldn’t imagine what his face would be like aged up. Maybe my imagination wasn’t built for that. I could easily imagine a horde of angry Kobolds barring fantasy heroes entry into a crystal cavern, but I couldn’t envision what an old boyfriend would look like a decade on.

The blank screen of my phone continued to stare back at me until I realized that the light in the upper corner of it was blinking wildly. I unlocked my phone to find many missed calls from my sister. A curse was muttered under my breath before I reluctantly called her back.

“What is it, Mabel?”

“THERE YOU ARE!” She sounded insulted. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours. What gives?”

“Chill, Mabel, I’m not dead,” I sighed heavily.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she hummed before continuing, “unless I’m talking to your GHOST!”

I chuckled, “If I was a ghost, I’d already be over at your house haunting you. Or begging you to get my body back from a demon. Or something.”

Mabel laughed loudly at that, “You know I’m always ready to help you back into your body anytime!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, like,” her tone got a little more serious, “why didn’t you pick up when I called? I always call at the same time every week, and this is the first time you didn’t pick up. Were you out looking for Bigfoot?”

“What? No, not this week.” I decided that I was hungry and starting searching the fridge for anything edible. “I was actually talking to an old friend for way too long on the phone.”

“An old friend?” Mabel hummed again, “But I know all your friends. Which friend was it? Was it that girl from physics class that you tried to—”

“No!” I might have been a bit too forceful in trying to avoid hearing an embarrassing high school story. “No, I was talking to Wirt.”

“Wirt?” There was a pause on the other end. “Oh my gosh, you mean Your First Real Boyfriend Wirt?!”

“Yeah, that Wirt.”

She made a high pitched noise and I set the phone down on the counter, changing it to speaker mode. “OH MY GOSH, DIPPER, THAT’S INCREDIBLE!!! How did you get his phone number?”

“I did a lot of research that I probably shouldn’t explain in too much detail over the phone.”

She clicked her tongue, “Right. Got’cha. So you found Wirt and talked to him! That’s really great!”

“Yeah, we talked for almost four hours.” I finally decided that my dinner would be a bowl of cereal and a can of Pitt.

“Four hours?! Wow, you guys really got right back on that horse.”

“We had a lot to catch up on,” I clarified. I could tell that she was implying something else, but I wasn’t going to let her jump to any crazy conclusions.

“Uh-huh, so what’s he up to?” There was still a quality in her tone that made it seem like she had already jumped to a crazy conclusion and wasn’t going to let it go.

However, this forded me an opportunity to change the subject into revealing everything I'd learned about what Wirt was up to. She asked questions and I gave simple answers. I didn’t need her to have fuel in her brain to create weird scenarios about us. Wirt and I were no longer dating and hadn’t been an item for a very long time, and I wanted to make it clear that that ship had long sailed away.

“So... what about Greg?” She asked it so casually after I had talked at length about how excited I was that Wirt was living so close to me.

“Who?” I had finished my dinner while we talked and was cleaning up the mess in the sink.

“Greg. His brother, Greg.” Mabel was snickering on the other end.

“I... totally forgot that he had a brother...” I wanted to jump off a cliff.

“Thought so,” she said in a voice that made it seem like I’d walked into a trap. A giggle bubbled up from the phone, “I can’t wait to see Wirt at the party! I wonder if he still looks like a giant nerd.” I thought about saying something to defend Wirt’s appearance, but I was also curious to know if he dressed like he did as a teenager. “Did you dig up any pics of him while you were hacking into his private information?”

I snorted, “I didn’t hack into anything, and I also didn’t find any pics other than his senior photos from high school.”

“That’s a shame,” she said glumly. “I bet he went from being nerd-cute to nerd-hot.”

“If anything, he’s going to be shocked when he sees that I’m not built like a twig anymore,” I chuckled.

“Yeah, you’re like a baby tree instead of a twig!” Mabel’s laughter is going to make me deaf someday.

“Haha, very funny, Mabel.”

“Thanks, bro-bro! I aim to please!”

“Look, I gotta go,” I said quickly as I switched the phone off of speaker mode. “I’ve got to wake up early tomorrow. I’m sorry about missing your 37 phone calls from earlier.”

“It’s okay,” she said with more cheer than I needed. “I’m glad you got to talk to Wirt. You two were, like, totally made for each other, and I always thought it was so sad that you never got to see him again. Now you can totally pick right back up where you left off!”

I sighed loudly. This was getting very annoying. “Mabel, I don’t have time for your delusions. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in a couple weeks, okay?”

“You know it, bro! Now get some sleep! Talk to you again next week!” She giggled and yelled, “DREAM SWEET DREAMS OF WIRT!!” Her voice rang loudly in my ear followed by an incredible amount of cackling that I cut off as quickly as I could. She wasn’t going to let me live this down at all.

The thing is... I didn’t feel any sort of regret. I had taken up the initiative to contact him on my own. No one forced me to do it. I wanted to hear his voice again, and I wanted to see him again. The opportunity landed perfectly in my lap and there was no way that I was going to lose that chance. But still, a part of me was nervous in a way that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. It wasn’t fear or dread, but it held my stomach in a similar way.

I can’t believe I invited him to the housewarming party...


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brother's housewarming party is infamous at his office. I never had one for when I moved into my house, but he ended up having 2 housewarming parties: one for our mutual friends/D&D buddies, and one for his coworkers. I'm not a big party person, but I was obligated to be at his coworker party because he needed help getting set up and all of that, so I stuck around to finally meet his coworkers. Anyway, it lives on as The Greatest Party Ever among his coworkers because he allowed them all to party as hard as they wanted. His coworkers were all mainly in their early twenties, fresh out of college, and once the sun had set they basically got drunk and devastated my twin's brand new house. Even our drinking-and-gambling father, who was also at the party, had to give up at around 1am because it was "getting out of hand." I had left the party with Mom long before they destroyed my dad's sanity. Apparently it turned into a rave at one point and one drunk coworker didn't leave until he woke up at 2pm the next day after passing out on my brother's couch. He hasn't had a party like that since.

During the pair of weeks leading up to Dipper’s housewarming party, I did my best to have some small talk fodder. I looked up recent news from Gravity Falls, soaking in the familiar names and faces of its citizens from what little information I could glean from the internet. The town was isolated in a large forested valley off the main highway, surrounded by high, picturesque cliffs and mountains. The scenery was breathtaking in my memory, and looking at photos online it seemed that Gravity Falls continued to have that majestic quality that I remembered. It was no wonder that Dipper would want to move there. Other than rogue cryptid sightings and occasional supernatural occurrences, Gravity Falls was a quiet, charming town nestled among gorgeous natural beauty.

Beyond lurking around for recent information on Gravity Falls, I also set about listening to Dipper’s podcast. I wasn’t the sort to listen to podcasts very often, and the podcasts I did listen to were mainly scripted science fiction podcasts that held onto the spirit of old radio dramas from the early twentieth century and a few historical and folklore podcasts. Otherwise, my knowledge of podcasts was fairly limited, but I was aware that podcasts like Dipper’s existed. They sometimes were recommended to me due to my interest in folk tales and history. I was surprised to find that Dipper’s podcast, called Paranormal Pines, was pretty popular and even mentioned in a few listicles as being in the top 10 best paranormal podcasts, though the sites it was listed on seemed dubious at best.

Not really knowing what to expect, I downloaded a few episodes with interesting titles and fell in love with his voice again. It sounded so much better when not filtered through the speaker of a telephone. His episodes seemed to be a combination of storytelling, history lesson, science lecture, and investigative reporting that was pleasant and calming to listen to even if the content was sometimes gruesome or disturbing. I made the mistake of listening to his episode about Skinwalker Ranch while I was at work and I nearly jumped through the ceiling when a coworker came to my desk to ask a question. He was great at creating atmosphere while still being objective in what his subject for that episode was. He had quite a few episodes that were interviews with people who had had experienced strange and supernatural things, and he was quite thoughtful and patient with everyone. It was nice seeing how well he had matured from the dirty child in the woods that I had once dated. And despite his belief in the supernatural, he never let that belief seep into his work. He would sometimes let slip that he had experience with some similar paranormal phenomenon he was discussing, but never dwelled on his own personal experiences. The podcast’s website also had an exhaustive list of resources and citations and links for extra reading for each episode, citing many physical books as part of his research and scans from his and his great-uncle’s research journals. I wondered if his new house had a library to hold all of the books he mentioned on his website.

I supposed that I would learn that soon enough as the day of the party finally landed upon my calendar. I made sure to listen to an episode of Dipper’s podcast on my drive into Gravity Falls, one that was about a haunted library somewhere in the Midwest, Illinois or Indiana or somewhere thereabouts. It wasn’t too spooky and it made for lovely background noise as the pine trees whirled by along the lonely road into town. I wasn’t a huge fan of relying on technology, but for this venture I decided that using GPS would help me out more than writing down directions and hoping I didn’t get lost. I was already a little late because I had spent too much time choosing what outfit I would wear. My reasoning for spending so much time on finding the proper clothes was that this would be my first time seeing Dipper in so many years and I needed to make a good impression on him, despite knowing that he had seen me at my worst after our adventures in the woods. In truth, I just wanted to prove that I was doing well for myself, even though my life was rather bland and ordinary. He likely wasn’t going to care what I looked like beyond being grateful that I showed up at all. It was hard to know for certain until I arrived, though.

After a couple of hours driving in the deep forests of Oregon, a sign boasting “Welcome to Gravity Falls” greeted me as I entered city limits. The road had been so peaceful heading into town, and it continued being peaceful even as I thought I saw a pterosaur gliding high above the trees. Dipper’s house was nestled near the edge of town, though not as far in the wilderness as the Mystery Shack was. As I came upon the house, I noted that his nearest neighbors were perhaps five minutes away, which meant he was sufficiently secluded in this area. His home was easy to spot as it was packed with more cars than absolutely necessary outside of it, as well as a plethora of balloons and signs indicating that this was where the party was at. From the amount of vehicles parked in his driveway and yard, it seemed like most of the town had decided to come to the housewarming. I found a place to park across the street from his driveway, and walked the length of his yard to arrive at his front door. Nestled safely under my arm was a gift I had prepared for him.

The house was absolutely stunning! It was a two-story log cabin with a large porch that wrapped itself around the perimeter of the home. A two-car detached garage sat next to it and a barn could be seen at the back, partially obscured by the foliage of the dense woods surrounding the property. I could smell the lake, which must have been settled somewhere beyond the tree line of his backyard. It was hard to tell how many acres the house sat upon, but it was clearly more than the half acre my tiny bungalow in Bend occupied. The scene was only marred by the large banner hanging from the second story that proclaimed in large, colorful letters “CONGRATS ON THE HOUSE!!!” It was clearly made with love, as upon closer inspection I could see the brush strokes that made up each letter and cartoonish balloon that was painted onto it. There was no doubt that the banner was his twin sister’s handiwork. I absolutely adored it, though. It meant that Mabel hadn’t lost that childlike charm of hers.

I could hear music coming from the backyard, which is where everyone must have filtered to after being paraded through the home itself. I was actually a bit glad I was late, as I could only imagine what kind of zoo it was with so many people bustling around inside what appeared to be a normal-sized house. If things got too awkward, it looked like I could easily escape without anyone noticing.

The front door was open, a glass screen door keeping the waking insects of early spring from gathering inside. The air was fresh and crisp, with winter’s chill clinging to it despite the strengthening sun peering down upon everything. I hesitated on the porch, my hand hovering between the doorbell and the screen door handle, the spring birds mocking my indecision with their chipper songs.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but my hesitation was interrupted by the visage of a young woman smiling broadly at me through the screen door. It took me a while to notice her as being real and not an illusion from my meandering imagination, and I jolted back in surprise. “Agh! U-uh, hi?”

She giggled and opened the screen door for me, “You sure haven’t changed much.”

I blinked a few times before realizing that this woman was Mabel. “You haven’t changed much, either,” I laughed lightly.

She looked like an older version of herself, which made sense. Her hair was a little shorter than the last time I’d seen her, and it was pulled back into a ponytail that was held up by three brightly colored scrunchies which matched with her bright 80s styled earrings. She wore a neon colored Dolman sleeved sweater dress with a wide neck that featured a cartoon dinosaur appliqué on it. Her leggings were a vibrant teal with hot pink legwarmers scrunched down over rainbow high top sneakers. The rest of her accessories, bracelets and necklaces and rings, were equally blinding in their bright colors. I would have thought I’d accidentally walked into an 80s themed party if I didn’t know that this was just how her personality and style were.

She laughed cheerfully, pulling me by my wrist to lead me inside, “These are just my party clothes. During the weekdays I have to pretend like I’m normal, even though everyone knows I’m not!” She laughed more as she continued to drag me deeper into the house. I barely had any time to take in what it looked like. It seemed nice, but everything was whizzing by too quickly for me to make any notes on even what the walls looked like. “C’mon, Dipper’s been waiting for you!”

“R-really?” I felt nervous, but I chalked up my stammering to the fact that I was being dragged against my will through an unfamiliar house by a woman I barely knew.

She hummed as she walked, “No, not really, but I know he’s excited to see you. I had no idea you were the type to be fashionably late! He’s gonna be so happy that you made it!” After dragging me through what felt like the quickest house tour imaginable, she sat me down at the kitchen table and finally resorted to just yelling her brother’s name out a window as loudly as possible.

Now I was even more nervous.

Footsteps trampled hurriedly towards the kitchen from... somewhere. I still didn’t know the layout of the house, but yelling loudly apparently worked.

“What? What is it, Mabel? Is someone dying?” I could tell by the voice exactly who it was. My attention shifted towards the owner of that voice, my heart fluttering as it had after that first phone call. It was him, Mason “Dipper” Pines, a man I never thought I would see again in my lifetime. There he stood, resting a hand against the entryway leading into the kitchen from the dining room, looking out of breath from his sprint to find his sister.

He was just as handsome as I had imagined him to be. There was something rugged about his appearance, though it was softened by the roundness of his face and the spectacles on the bridge of his nose. He was starting to look like his great-uncles. His wardrobe, much like his sister’s, was similar to what I knew from the past. He wore a t-shirt that was likely his best t-shirt despite the faded picture of a UFO on it, a flannel shirt draped over it to provide a modicum of warmth, frayed jeans with various stains on them, and muddy tennis shoes that had seen better days. On his head was a hat that looked similar to the one he wore over a decade ago, but it was definitely newer and sized to fit the head of an adult male. He was, in summation, a perfect replica of what I had dreamed him to be and it was tearing my heart to pieces.

“Wirt?” He said my name cautiously, as though a part of him was disbelieving that I was there at all. “Is that really you?”

I nodded, lifting myself from the seat that Mabel had forced me into. “Yeah, it’s me. Hi.” I shifted awkwardly, not knowing if I should move closer to him or not before remembering that my gift for him was still shoved under my arm. “Oh, um... this is for you...” I pulled the gift box from under my arm and held it out in front of me, hazarding a few steps closer to him.

Dipper smiled at me before his gaze shifted to the red-and-blue box I was handing to him. From the corner of my eye I could see Mabel’s smile widening even more. “Um, thanks. Do you, uh... want me to open it now, or...?”

I laughed nervously, “Oh, no. You don’t need to open it now. Why don’t we, um... tour the house? It’s lovely, from what I’ve seen so far.”

“O-oh, yeah. A tour. I can do that.” He made no eye contact with me, instead staring right at his sister. It must have been some kind of twin language, as they made a few faces and gestures at each other before Mabel shrugged and walked out the back door, her smile still wide and playful as she left. Dipper stared after her for a few extra seconds before sighing. “She’s been acting weird ever since I told her we got in contact with each other again. You know how she is.”

I did not, in fact, know how she is. “Oh, yeah. Classic Mabel,” I lied.

“Come on, I’ll show you the house. I think you’re the last person to show up who said they were coming...” He made a thoughtful noise as he directed me into the hallway that led back towards the front door. On the way, he placed the gift on a table that appeared to be the receptacle for every gift he had received that day. “I thought you were the punctual type.”

“It took longer for me to find this place than I thought it would,” I lied again.

“Yeah, this is kinda the middle of nowhere, but it’s been nice so far,” he shrugged, “aside from the ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

He shrugged again, “They’re not mean or evil, so it’s fine.”

“Okay...”

With that, the tour began. Three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, a family room, a basement that he was converting into a studio for podcasting as well as making his personal research facility and library. Every room was beautiful and had large windows to allow for light to flood in and provide picturesque views of the natural beauty that lay just outside the walls. The downstairs maintained the log cabin look from the outside of the house, incorporating the wood in the walls, but the upstairs had a more modern feel. It was apparently built nearly a hundred years ago and was recently renovated, which agitated the ghosts in the home. Or so that’s what Dipper explained to me.

We finished the tour in the master bedroom upstairs, Dipper sitting down on the edge of the bed and gesturing for me to join him. I did so, keeping a safe distance between us, keenly aware that if I strayed too close to him then it might indicate that I was still not over him. I was long over him, but I still liked him – as a friend. We sat facing the window, the view of the revelry in the backyard coming into clearer view from this angle. The sounds of the party were muffled at this height, and I was grateful for it.

“I’m, uh,” Dipper started speaking slowly, “I-I’m really glad you could make it. I didn’t mean to spring it on you so suddenly, but I’m... I’m really glad you came.”

“I’m glad, too,” I said quietly, my hands fidgeting in my lap. “I never expected to hear from you ever again. I gave you my number, but you never called... I kind of thought you hated me.”

“What? No, I don’t hate you. I just...” He sucked in a deep breath before continuing, “I was just nervous about calling you, and then after a while it was too late and I felt awful about it. I actually thought that you hated me for taking so long to call you, and then I thought you hated me for inviting you here on such short notice just because you were a little late.”

I let out a short laugh, “It’s okay. There’s no way I could be mad at you for something like that.” I sighed and shifted my posture, glancing to him slightly, “Honestly, the reason I was late was because I kept changing my outfit over and over again, thinking that I could impress you with my appearance even though I knew it didn’t matter. At our cores, we’re both just nervous wrecks.”

He nodded at this, looking me up and down for a moment before finally speaking again, “You look nice. I thought that when I first saw you, but I didn’t get a chance to say it. You look good.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. I hoped that smile conveyed my feelings well enough.

We spent a long time sitting there quietly, the space between our bodies feeling like a void across time. I inched slightly closer, but not enough to make it weird. We gave each other fleeting glances as we let the calm wash over us like sunlight. It was in that room, seated so near to him, that I realized that I was still in love with Dipper Pines and the knowledge was eating away at my sanity.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What about the other housewarming party my brother had? It's really not worth mentioning, honestly. It was just our D&D crew and a couple other friends of ours, and we played D&D for 6 hours. It was basically just normal D&D, but with better food and a couple extra people milling about. No one destroyed a door or anything, unlike the other party he had.
> 
> Ah, and I forgot to mention that Mabel's "adult" fashion is basically just my IRL fashion. My choices for her shoes were either my glitter tie-dye rainbow high tops or my electric blue platform boots with pink wings on them. I obviously settled on rainbow high tops; they're much more practical for partying.

I couldn’t believe how handsome he was, and sitting next to him in this quiet moment made me so much more aware of it. He'd admitted to trying hard to look as nice as possible to see me, but he would've looked nice even at his worst. A soft green sweater over a neatly ironed shirt, a pair of freshly pressed gray slacks, and white knit socks peeking out from over his shined black shoes – he hadn’t changed at all. The shape of his body made him look taller than me, even though we were similar in height now. He no longer towered over me with his lanky body and gangly limbs. It was his face, though, that caught my attention. It was long and thin, a sharp chin pairing well with his sharp nose and sharp jaw line, yet none of the sharpness detracted from how gentle his expressions were. His eyes were unsure of where to look, and it must have been the silence that was making him fidgety.

I decided to break that silence. “So, uh... how’s Greg?”

He had been looking out the window when my words hit him, and he turned his attention back to me in a daze. “Greg?”

“Your brother, Gregory? I forgot to ask about him the last time we chatted.”

“Oh,” he laughed nervously, “he’s fine. He’s going to school in Ohio, so I haven’t seen him much lately.”

“College, right?” I hoped I was right.

“Yeah, he’s finishing up his freshman year,” he said quietly, moving his gaze back to the window. “He still hasn’t decided on what to major in, but I’m sure he’ll think of something. He loves making up songs to sing, so I always thought he’d try to major in music, but instead he’s just goofing around. Which is okay. He has plenty of time to figure out what he wants to do.”

I followed his eyes to the outside world, where the sun had drifted into its afternoon position. “I don’t remember him very well. He was a goofy kid, though. I remember that. Mabel thought he was great, but she’s also a goofball.”

Wirt sighed, “Yeah, we’ve never really been super close, but things got better after that one incident.”

I quirked a brow, “What incident?”

He turned to look at me again in modest surprise, “I thought I told you about the incident. Did I just imagine telling you about it?” He looked up at the ceiling, humming in thought. “When you told me that anyone touched by the weirdness of the world found their way to Gravity Falls way back then, I thought that meant I’d already told you.”

I shrugged, “I mean, you could have and I just don’t remember. It’s been like twelve... thirteen years since then.”

“That could be,” he chuckled, directing his gaze back on me. His smile was still lopsided and the thought of how cute it was rushed by, only to be immediately halted and squashed. “Well, I guess I could tell you again since you don’t remember it.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I smiled back.

Wirt then told me the strangest near-death experience story I'd ever heard, and to make it even more bizarre, it was a shared experience with his younger brother. On Halloween night the year before we met in Gravity Falls, Wirt and Greg fell into a lake to avoid being hit by a train and nearly drowned. In their shared experience, they found themselves lost in the woods of a place called the Unknown. They awoke there with no memories of the events leading up to them being lost in the forest – all they knew was that they were trying to get home. While in the Unknown, it felt like months had passed for them, yet when they finally escaped back to this world, only seconds had passed. Because they had both experienced it, it bonded them together more as brothers. Greg is Wirt’s half-brother, and Wirt had some personal issues regarding his step-father at the time that he was, I guess, projecting onto Greg. I didn’t really understand much of his family problems, but if nearly dying helped improve his relationship with his brother, then that’s what mattered. Wirt then shared a few of the adventures they went on while in the Unknown – an encounter with an entire town filled with skeleton people wearing vegetable costumes, their guide Beatrice who cursed herself and her entire family into being bluebirds, freeing a girl from an evil spirit that demanded she devour any travelers that came to her house... it was all too fantastical to be real, yet I believed him. I remembered that he'd mentioned some kind of accident that had happened to him and his brother before they vacationed in Gravity Falls, but he’d never told me the full details. His poetic style of relating the tale made me wonder how many times he had told this story to others, as it felt practiced, and I could feel his conviction behind every word he spoke. It was incredibly fascinating!

“Wow,” was the only thing I could muster to say after he finished telling the story. It was like watching a storyteller weave a fairy tale before my eyes – the tale of noble Wirt rescuing his brother from an evil beast and helping the cursed Beatrice by giving her scissors to clip away her feathers and turn her back into a human. It was mesmerizing and beautiful.

“Y-yeah, and that’s not everything that happened,” he said sheepishly. “We had a lot of adventures in the Unknown, but Greg remembers things a little differently. I spent the whole time being worried and terrified, but he remembers it being a fun adventure, even when he thinks back to nearly being turned into a tree or almost eaten by a monstrous dog. He was going to sacrifice himself so I could go home... I was a terrible brother to him at the time, yet he was willing to do that for me.”

It was hard for me to even know what to say. I sat there quietly for longer than I wanted to. I realized then that the poem I heard on that tape, about the boy trapped in roots and tree branches, was about his brother and likely his feelings during that whole ordeal. My hand shifted to rest on Wirt’s, giving it a gentle squeeze before moving my hand away quickly to rest on my lap again. “You became a better brother for him, though. I think that’s what’s important.”

“I guess so, yeah,” he muttered, looking out the window again.

I brought in a deep breath and said softly, “That story would make a great podcast episode. I could interview you and we could do a call in to your brother... b-but only if that’s a thing you’d want to do. No pressure!”

Wirt’s focus was still outside, and I had no idea what was going through his mind. Why did I ask him that? That was dumb and insensitive! He just told me a moving and sincere story about a childhood trauma, and I suggested that he publicly recount it for the internet’s entertainment...

“That sounds cool,” he replied. He looked at me with that adorable lopsided smile on his face. “I listened to your podcast and I really like how you interview people. I’d be honored to be on your podcast. I can contact Greg and see how he feels about it, but yeah... Yeah, I think we can do it.”

My jaw dropped for a second, rendering me briefly unable to answer. _He actually agreed to it?!_ “A-awesome! Right now, all my ‘new’ episodes are prerecorded since I knew it would take a while to move in, but once I get everything set up in the basement, your interview can be the first episode from my new home studio! I’ve got to, uh,” I got up and began pacing, my mind swirling with thoughts and ideas, “I-I’ll do more research on NDEs so I’m ready with questions to fire at you from a pseudoscientific standpoint, and also research into what causes these kinds of phenomena from a true scientific standpoint, like if it’s just a misfiring of synapses or a lack of oxygen to the brain, since the inciting factor was you drowning. And then, um... different dimensions! If the Unknown is a different dimension, or some kind of alternate world or even purgatory, then I can go through scans of Grunkle Ford’s old journal entries to see if he ever encountered a place like it in the multiverse...”

“Dipper?”

“Yeah,” I paused mid-stride.

“Shouldn’t you rejoin the party? I mean... it’s a party for you...”

I adjusted my posture and looked out the window, listening to muffled karaoke music filtering itself up to the atmosphere. I smiled and shook my head, “Nah, I’m not the best at parties.”

“Me, neither,” Wirt agreed.

“Then... do you wanna see my library? Right now it’s just a bunch of Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons source material books, but it’ll be filled with other books soon, once this party is over.”

He rose from the bed and asked, “You still play DD&MD?”

“I did until I moved here,” I said quietly. “I’ll need to find a new group to play with, since I left mine back in California.”

“If you need someone, I’d love to play,” Wirt said absently as we walked out of the bedroom and back downstairs. “I’m not big into fantasy, but I like the idea of using imagination to kill goblins and trolls. You can teach me how to play, right?”

I smiled broadly, my heart pounding in my chest. Finally, someone who wanted to play DD&MD with me _and_ he wanted me to teach him how to play! “Of course, Wirt! I’d be happy to teach you how to play. There are a lot of rules, but you don’t need to know all of them to enjoy the game. You just need a bag of dice, a character sheet, and your imagination!”

“I don’t have two of those things, but I like to think that I have an imagination,” Wirt chuckled as we walked down into the basement. I flipped the light switch and revealed the mess of boxes and partially put together furniture that was my podcasting station and research facility. I went to the shelf where all my DD&MD materials were and pulled out the starter kit, opening it up and explaining things to him in simple detail. He asked great questions, and I gave my best answers. I could tell that he was becoming more and more interested with each new piece of information I gave him. After a while, we moved everything upstairs to the kitchen table, covering it in cardboard tiles and sheets of paper and polyhedral dice and fantasy miniatures, only halfway listening to the noise coming from out back. Inside, we were comfortable in our small nerdy bubble of fantasy role play and the companionship of an old friend.


	7. Chapter 7

As much as I was enjoying listening to Dipper explain the importance of dice rolls in DD&MD to me, Dipper eventually had to rejoin his party. While he socialized, I got to become reacquainted with some of the citizens of the town as well as be introduced to new faces. The party was still going long after the sun had set beyond the distant mountains, and as it got later I ended up seeing myself out when the party became less about celebrating Dipper’s new home purchase and more about, well, partying. Dipper seemed a little irritated that he was hosting such a raucous gathering, but he said that there wasn’t much he could do about it when his sister was calling the shots. After all, it was a beautiful Saturday night and everyone had time to kill.

Dipper led me down to the end of his long driveway and waved to me as I drove off into the darkness of the forested road, watching me until I was out of sight. I had asked him before I left what he would do now that I was leaving, and he said that he would likely enjoy the party for a little while longer before going to bed, regardless of whether or not there were still guests on his lawn. It felt wrong that his housewarming party had mutated into whatever was going on in the backyard, and that no one seemed to care that he had been left out of his own party. I hoped that he would be able to get some sleep, even with the noise from outside. “I sound-proofed the basement,” he had said with a laugh when I asked about the noise. “If I have to, I’ll sleep down there.” It didn’t seem like an ideal place to sleep, but if he had to do so, then he had no choice.

As for me, I drove the long way home listening to music instead of Dipper’s podcast. I worried that listening to his voice would lull me on my drive, so instead I listened to whatever the radio had to offer. The moon left a path of blue-white light to guide me towards the highway again and the stars twinkled passionately in the endless void of sky. The day felt surreal, like a long dream that I had ventured into and I was now drifting somewhere between wakefulness and slumber, in that twilight space where reality slowly filters in and changes the dream world from imaginary to ordinary.

After arriving home just after midnight, I peeled off my shoes and clothes and changed into my pajamas, crashing my body against the softness of my bed. It creaked and groaned with familiarity and soon the mattress remembered the curves of my form as I laid there, my eyes looking up at the popcorn ceiling and the spider-like shadow of the ceiling fan as yellow lamp light bathed everything in its warm glow. I let out a long sigh, my brain recounting the day in vivid detail, trying its best to preserve everything about what had happened that day deep inside its wrinkles.

 _Oh, no_ , I thought as a certain memory flashed before me. “Oh, no...” My eyes went wide as I finally realized that I did something that I shouldn’t have done: I agreed to go on Dipper’s podcast. _What was I thinking?!_ I lifted my hands to my face and dragged my fingers down from my forehead to my chin, clawing uselessly at the flesh. _I’m an idiot!_

I reached over to the nightstand and turned off the lamp, letting darkness consume my sight. If I backed out of it, would it make me look like a jerk? The answer to that question came easily. There was no way I could get out of what I agreed to without seeming like the worst kind of human imaginable. I would just have to call Greg and see what his thoughts on the matter were. Knowing him, he would absolutely agree to it, thinking of it as a fun opportunity to tell yet more people about what to me was a traumatic experience and for him was a good ole time. For this moment, though, I needed sleep, and eventually my busy mind slowed its hurried thoughts and fell quiet, drifting me into slumber. I don’t remember my dreams from that night, but I think they were a mixture of happy and miserable. The day had been an experience.

The next morning was a dreary Sunday and I sat at my kitchen table for a long time, my tea growing cold as I watched the rain slide down the window pane in slim sheets, the patter of each droplet tapping out a rhythm on my roof. I sighed, knowing that I needed to call Greg before I completely lost all of my will to do so. My phone sat quietly next to me on the table, its black screen daring me to unlock it and do what needed to be done.

Another sigh passed my lips as I gave up on my tea, succumbing to the dare of the phone. I unlocked it and searched for Gregory, pushed the call button, and hoped that he wouldn’t be too cheerful on the other end.

The phone rang twice before the voice of my brother proclaimed loudly from the other end, “Good morning, brother o’ mine! I haven’t heard from ya in forever! What’s the special occasion, my good ole bro?”

He was definitely too cheerful. “Yeah, h-hi Greg. It’s been a while...” I didn’t really know why I was so nervous. We didn’t talk often, but for some reason it was awkward this time.

“Yeah, the last time you called was for...” he paused and I could almost hear the gears of his brain clicking to figure out when the last time was. “Oh, it was because you were trying to figure out a math problem and couldn’t find your calculator!”

“I probably would have figured it out on my own,” I said indignantly. “Eventually. Maybe.”

He laughed, “It’s okay, Wirt. You now know that there’s a calculator on your phone, and it’s just as friendly and helpful as a regular calculator!”

I didn’t appreciate being reminded of my technology-related ineptitude. “A-anyway, how are you? Are you studying hard? Keeping well? Figuring out your purpose in life?”

“Hm... kinda hungry, not really, very well, and not at all!” He laughed again, which made me smile a little. He got on my nerves a lot, but he was still a good brother. We weren’t as close as Dipper and Mabel were, but we were close enough to be able to confirm our mutual fondness for one another. I loathe saying that I love my brother, even though that’s likely the proper word to use for that feeling of fondness.

“That’s good, I guess,” I said without really taking in the details of what he was saying. “Hey, uh, I actually called because I need to talk to you about something.”

“I figured,” he said and I could hear his smile in his tone. “You only ever call me if you have a reason to.”

Immediately I felt bad. I always worried that if I called him at random, then he might be busy doing something important and get mad or upset that I had called him, even though he was rarely ever mad or upset. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him mad or upset. He’s always happy-go-lucky and incredibly optimistic. I could probably call him while he was being eaten by an alligator and he would still merrily chat about his day, likely even offering the phone to the alligator so it could feel involved in the conversation. That’s just the kind of person he’s always been.

“Do you remember Dipper Pines?” I asked slowly as I pulled myself up from the kitchen table to discard the remains of my tea into the sink and wash the mug out.

He made a long sound from the back of his throat before anything resembling a word came out. “Uh... the kid from the Mystery Shack?”

“Yes, the kid from the Mystery Shack,” I said as I shouldered the phone against my ear to dry my mug with a cloth. “He got in contact with me recently, and I saw him for the first time in years yesterday.”

He made another noise, this one louder and shorter than the previous one. “Whoa, neat! How is he? How’s his sister?”

We bantered for a while about updates regarding the Pines twins, what they were up to and what they looked like and all of that. Greg asked more questions about Mabel than I had answers for, and he was a good sport as I gushed about how handsome Dipper was now that he had long finished puberty.

Greg was the first person I came out to, and he never judged me or shamed me for it. No matter who I loved, he was always supportive in a way that others never truly were. To him, I was his brother and I could love whoever I wanted to love, regardless of their gender. He noticed my obvious crush on Dipper before I was even ready to admit it to myself, but he never made fun of me or pushed me in any way. I do remember that he said something to me once that summer, likely because he thought I was fearful of telling Dipper my feelings. He said to me, “If you don’t try, then nothing will begin. The Red Ranger taught me that!” It was out of the blue and I still don’t quite know what his point was, but who am I to question the ancient wisdom of the Power Rangers?

Our conversation meandered as Greg also found himself sucked into the past that I had been absorbed into these past few weeks. As topics shifted, we found ourselves on the familiar subject of the Unknown and our memories of that place. He had an incredible memory for the songs that we heard while in the Unknown, and soon he was singing sweetly along to those old tunes from our shared childhood memory. I wondered how Beatrice was, if she had grown and married and had a family of her own. Does she tell her children the story of how she traveled through the Unknown with a pair of lost children as she sought to find a cure for her curse? She must, just as she likely sings for them the lullaby her mother sang to me as I slept in that tree, warmed by more bluebirds than I could count. Even now, I still hum its tune and sing a few lines when I’m in a good mood, its melody simple and beautiful. Tales like those found in the Unknown are meant to be told, and Greg and I had been telling those tales for years, even if no one believed that they’re true.

With the timing now perfect, I finally brought up my original reason for calling my brother. I told Greg about what a fool I had been to agree to be on Dipper’s podcast, and that I had agreed to ask if he wanted to be interviewed as well. As I expected, Gregory was absolutely delighted at the idea of being able to tell the whole of the internet about our journey in the Unknown.

“We can do our whole performance!” Greg’s voice was filled with too much glee.

“No, Greg, this needs to be a normal interview,” I sighed heavily. I had moved myself to the great room by this point and was relaxing on my couch. “No singing or musical instruments or performance of any kind. No one will take us seriously if we come in with a whole routine.”

“But, _Wirt_! The _Unknown_ was _filled_ with _music_! We can’t just _ignore_ that _important detail_ ,” he said, putting a lot of emphasis on words that didn’t need to be emphasized.

“Greg, this is a serious podcast,” I groaned.

“And that’s why we need to amp up the fun factor!”

I sighed, groaned, then sighed again. “Okay. Fine. I’ll ask Dipper to see if it’s okay for us to do songs for his podcast. If Dipper hates it, though, then we’ll do a normal interview like what I said we should. Deal?”

“Deal!” There was a long silence on Greg’s end before he spoke again, “I did a handshake with my phone which officially seals the deal!”

“Right. That makes sense.” It didn’t make sense, but I went along with it anyway.

“So, Wirt... that means the next time you’ll call me is for this interview, right?”

There was something in his voice that made me pause before I answered. “No. I think... I think I’ll try to call you more often. Dipper and Mabel call each other once a week. Should we try that?”

“Yeah! Call me every Sunday! I love avoiding homework!”

“Nope,” I said quickly. “No way. I’ll call on Sundays and bug you to do your homework.”

“Aww, Wirt...”

“You can’t keep slacking off.”

He whined and whimpered on the other end. “Okay... as long as it means that you’ll call me every week.”

“I will,” I said, and I truly meant it. “And if I don’t call you by 5pm your time, then I give you permission to call me and bother me as much as you want.”

“That’s an even better deal than the last one!” This time I anticipated the silence of him shaking his phone as a pseudo-handshake. “Deal officially sealed!”

“All right,” I chuckled. “Hey, I need to get off this phone and tell Dipper about our strange interview proposition. I’ll talk to you again next week, okay?”

“Okay!!” He laughed and was surprisingly the first of us to hang up.

I let out a long breath as I watched my phone go dark. I wasn’t going to call Dipper immediately. I needed to charge my phone and do some looking through my attic, where I stored a lot of items that brought back memories of the Unknown. Back then I wrote a lot of poetry and prose about the experience, recording it all in journals and notebooks and cassette tapes like that one I had listened to nearly a month earlier. I needed to flood my mind with all of it, submerge myself in that odd world where storybook tales were very real and very dangerous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saying that quote is from Power Rangers is a little disingenuous. It's actually from Tensou Sentai Goseiger and is a quote that I've held dear from that series for many years. My favorite Red Ranger, Alata, said that line in the first episode of the series. Over the course of Goseiger, he solidified his position as my favorite Red Ranger of all time by holding true to his belief that trying is the most important first step towards doing anything. It doesn't matter if you fail as long as you tried your best. You've already succeeded just by jumping over that first hurdle of attempting something in the first place. Thank you, Alata. You've always been a true hero to me, just as you were a hero to many Japanese kids during your time as Red Ranger. I wonder if Chiba Yudai, Alata's actor, still gets fans telling him that he's their favorite Red Ranger...


	8. Chapter 8

I dreamed of Wirt that night. It was an innocent dream, and for all I knew it could have easily passed for a memory. We were resting on the grass somewhere, looking up at the sky, talking about nothing and enjoying each other’s company. I couldn’t tell what age we were, if we were children back in that dream-like summer or if my mind had superimposed the Wirt of now into the scene. Whatever the case, the dream was warm and pleasant, but I felt something else creeping into my slumber. A presence from outside the dream was hovering near enough to disturb my peaceful dream.

_Not those ghosts again..._

I opened my eyes to see a blurry person-shaped figure dangling over me with a broad smile. I cried out, “Mabel, why are you here?!” I would have preferred the ghosts.

Mabel giggled and pulled away, “I’m staying in the guestroom, silly! Or did you forget because you were having a hot and spicy dream about Wirt?”

 _Hot and spicy?_ “That’s none of your business, and that doesn’t answer my question,” I said as I rolled over and pulled the blankets over my head.

“I’m here to wake you up, duh!” Hands gripped my body over the blankets and began to shake me playfully. “Wakey-wakey!! I made breakfast and everything!”

“Lemme guess,” I said, my voice shaking a little from the violence being wrought upon my body, “it’s toast with sprinkles and eggs with glittery smiley faces.” We had been eating the same thing for breakfast since she arrived a few days ago to help with party preparation.

“You guessed it!” She stopped moving my body, but before I could exhale in relief I felt the whole of her weight on top of me, “If you don’t get up, I’ll stay here like this until you’re a Dipper-shaped pancake!”

I groaned, shoving her and the blankets from my body, “Fine, fine, I’ll eat your sugar breakfast. I don’t even know how you can be so peppy when you went to bed at 4am.” My body had no desire to leave the bed, but I swung my limbs over the edge of my mattress and stood up, everything cracking as I did so.

“I mean, it’s almost noon now, so it’s brunch time,” she said with a grin. “I woke up a couple hours ago and downed so much caffeine and sugar that I probably won’t sleep for a week.”

“That’s not something to be proud of,” I said as I grabbed my glasses and my phone from the nightstand. “How are your teeth not rotted from your head?”

She poked her cheek in an attempt to be cute, “Brushing and flossing and enjoying life!”

I yawned and stretched before slowly heading towards the bedroom door. Mabel had already shot out of the room when I started moving and was halfway downstairs by the time I reached the door, and my sluggish pace continued until my butt was seated at the kitchen table, a modest feast of leftovers from the party paired with the aforementioned breakfast sprawled out before me. Conversation from me was sparse, as it was mostly Mabel talking about anything and everything from the day before while I nodded and tried to not get a headache from the mountain of rainbow sprinkles piled onto my toast. My mind was mainly elsewhere, the drumming of the rain at the windows making for an easy distraction from Mabel’s wild exclamations. The sound of it was comforting, like it was drawing up an ancient memory that I couldn’t quite grasp.

“So when are you gonna open all those gifts?” It was a question that I felt like I needed to answer, but I didn’t really feel like giving it a proper response. I shrugged. “You’re not even gonna open Wirt’s gift?”

That drew me back to reality. “Oh, I probably should open his,” I said, though my voice sounded distant coming from my mouth. “I think most of the gifts are gift cards, except for a few large gifts.”

“You don’t really need to open Mom and Dad’s gift since you know what it is,” Mabel said, gesturing towards the direction all the gifts were, “but I’d really like to see your face when you open up mine!”

Mom and Dad had decided to give me the fine china, likely because they couldn’t trust Mabel to take proper care of it. Just going into her house once had me shedding glitter for a week. I always thought that she would eventually grow out of the childish things that she liked as a kid, but that never happened. Instead, it just morphed into a wider array of brightly colored ephemera and 80s/90s kitsch now that she had disposable income. She went through a few different phases in her teens, but her twenties saw the revival of neon colors and sparkly plastic gems and puffy stickers and the resurgence of her boy band obsession. At least I turned out pretty normal by comparison.

“Is it a sweater?” It seemed like a valid guess as to what her gift could be.

“Nope!” She made a buzzer noise from her mouth and poked me in the nose. “You’ll have to open it to find out!”

I touched my booped nose, rubbing it a little. “All right, let’s start with the gift cards and work our way through everything else.”

“I vote we save Wirt’s gift for last,” Mabel hummed, glancing at the pile of gifts.

I shrugged, as that seemed like a nice way to end the gift opening. But first, we needed to clean up brunch and transfer the pile of gifts to the kitchen table. The dishes were easy, but sorting through the pile of gifts was a bit of a chore. I was actually grateful that Mabel had elected herself as being in charge of keeping track of everyone’s gifts and putting together the thank you cards, even if it was really just an excuse for her to slap a ton of stickers onto every note card and use her most vibrant gel pens to write with.

It took a couple hours to get through everything, making careful notes of who gifted what and making sure that we had at least a phone number for each person so I could contact them and thank them. Not everyone had given me a gift, but in the end the grand total was: 13 gift cards, 3 bottles of wine, 2 casserole dishes, a dinnerware set, a set of knives, a hatchet, the fine china from our parents, a toolbox with tools in it, and half a sack of potatoes. I wasn’t entirely certain what to do with the potatoes. All that left was Mabel’s mystery box and the gift that Wirt had given me.

“Open my gift,” Mabel said cryptically as she shoved her sparkly unicorn-covered gift box towards me. She had clearly decorated the box herself, as it had that Mabel trademark DIY quality to it, and expertly tied a shiny holographic ribbon around it to keep the box secure.

I hesitated in touching it because it was already leaving a glitter trail on the tabletop. Carefully I pulled it near me, hoping to not be covered in glitter as I removed the bow from it and lifted the box top off from the base. I stared blankly into that box for a long moment before I gathered my thoughts as I finally realized what the gift was.

“You made a scrapbook for me?” I pulled it out, glad that it wasn’t covered in glitter and bright colors. Instead, she had taken a standard scrapbook and pasted paper over it in muted primary colors and glued text on the cover reading “Pines Family Memories” in a large, friendly font. She had placed a blue pine tree on the cover under the lettering to make it clear that it was meant solely for me. I flipped through a few of the pages, smiling at old memories resurfacing with each photograph and blurb of text.

“I wanted you to have something to remember us by since you’re so far away now,” she said. It was a truly thoughtful gift and she didn’t ruin it by rubbing that fact in my face. She said she wanted to see my face when I opened it, and it seemed like she was satisfied with the result. I was absolutely touched.

“Mabel, this is wonderful,” I said quietly. “Thank you...”

She smiled broadly, “You’re welcome. I’m just glad you like it!”

I smiled at the pages as I flipped through the book for a little longer before setting it back in the box. I still had one more gift that I needed to open for today. Sensing my shifting attention, Mabel picked up her gift, moving it aside to the pile of already opened gifts, and slid the final box in front of me. That motion allowed for some of the glitter from Mabel’s box to stick to Wirt’s, but I didn’t mind. I pulled the box closer to me, tugging off the red bow from atop it before ripping the red-and-blue striped paper away to reveal a large cardboard box that I eagerly tore open.

The inside of the box smelled of old wood and aged paper, which made it distinct among the other boxes that contained new things, and inside it was an array of items. At the top of the box was a bundle of papers tied with twine, each page filled with poetry, and another cassette tape with my name on it, which was likely a sequel to the one that I had received so many years ago. Underneath the poetry was a pair of knitted mittens and socks with beautiful ethnographic designs on them which made me wonder where he had gotten them from. I set those aside to find a bottle of cologne with a large red bow lovingly tied around its neck that had a lovely scent to it, though I doubted I would ever use it. The last item was a large, wooden keepsake box that looked old and beautiful. The top of the box had an intricately carved forest scene with a large tree in the foreground that was studded in amber stones for the leaves, while the sides of the box were detailed with delicate carvings of flowers. I had never seen anything like it and I could only assume that he found it in an antique shop somewhere. I opened the hinged lid of the wooden box to find inside it 3 vinyl records, one of which was an album of classical music and the other two albums were from artists I didn’t know. Under those albums, sitting atop the dark red velvet lining of the box, was a neatly folded letter addressed to me in Wirt’s telltale handwriting.

 

> Dear Dipper,
> 
> I hope that these items find you well. Each has a story and I hope that our newly rekindled friendship will allow me time to elaborate on their significance in greater detail than what I can say so briefly in writing.
> 
> The first item is, of course, more poetry for you to indulge in. These poems were written after we met and were written with the intent to find you again someday, should our paths ever cross again. Now that they have, it seems well that I should give you these musings of mine from over the years. They are simply my thoughts about anything and everything, though there is one that was written after we parted as teens. It’s the oldest of the collection and I hope that it doesn’t make you cringe as much as it did for me when I reread it. I recorded everything fairly quickly onto the cassette tape, so please forgive any mistakes in the audio or my delivery.
> 
> The second items are mittens and socks that I acquired while on a trip to Europe some years back. The symbols have meanings, and the socks should have a slip of paper in them with English descriptions on all the meanings. They seemed appropriate to give to you because they have a tree and star motif, with the tree being representative of the dawn and the star to represent divine protection. I hope they will keep you warm here in the Pacific Northwest.
> 
> The third item is a brand of cologne that I absolutely adore. I don’t wear it often, but I always get compliments whenever I have it on. You don’t need to wear it, but I thought it would be nice for you to have just in case. I’m not sure how often a paranormal researcher and podcaster will need it, though I’m sure it will come in handy someday.
> 
> The fourth item is the box that you found this letter in, and subsequently the albums inside it. The albums are from my collection and are vintage albums that are no longer available. I know you likely don’t have a record player, but I wanted you to have them anyway. Think of it as an excuse to come to my place so we can listen to them together while hanging out. That’s a normal thing that friends do, right? As for the box itself, it’s an antique with an unclear history despite its stunning beauty. The owner of the shop I found it in said that it was likely from Latvia circa 1960 as the stones are Baltic amber. I couldn’t find a use for it in my home, so I thought that it could make a wonderful addition to yours. You can fill it with whatever items you find worthy of placing inside it and perhaps give it to your children if that day ever comes.
> 
> Thank you so much for inviting me to your housewarming party and thank you again for getting in touch with me. It really has been great being able to reignite our friendship!
> 
>                                                                                                                                                                     Sincerely yours,
> 
>                                                                                                                                                                              Wirt

“Wow,” Mabel said before punching me in the arm. At some point while I was quietly reading the letter, she had moved around to my side of the table and was reading over my shoulder. “It’s a good thing we saved that box for last!”

I was actually at a loss for words. Wirt could have easily gone to a home goods store and bought me a serving plate or a decorative tray, but instead he put together things that were incredibly meaningful. I wasn’t sure what to do or think. I stared at each item for a long time, my fingers brushing over everything before I finally looked up at Mabel, searching her face for help on how I was supposed to be reacting to all of this.

She grinned and moved back to her empty seat at the other side of the kitchen table. “Why don’t you go take a shower and put some clothes on? I’ll clean up here while you do that. When you’re done, you can call Wirt and give him your thanks.”

I nodded and slowly pushed my chair away from the table. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea. Taking a shower would calm my mind down a little, allowing me time to think and formulate just what I was going to say to Wirt when I called him. And I was absolutely going to call him. He wrote me a letter and recorded poetry for me; it was the least I could do for him.

As I showered and clothed myself, I thought to those mittens and socks, which looked like a grandmother had knitted them in an old cottage in the woods. I thought of the cologne and how its scent reminded me of Wirt because he must have been wearing it when he visited yesterday. I thought of that beautiful wooden box and how it couldn’t have been cheap when it had real amber stones placed so neatly onto its lid. I thought of those records and the promise that one day I would visit his home and listen to the rustic tones of old tunes while surrounded by whatever vintage knickknacks he kept in his home. I thought to the poetry and the cassette tape that accompanied it, remembering his voice on that old tape of mine and how entranced I was by his cadence as he spoke every word with purpose back when I was barely a teenager.

I thought of Wirt and how much that he must care for me still, even after all these years.


	9. Chapter 9

My phone made an ugly noise, jarring me from my trip into the bygone world of the Unknown. Memories had swirled around me like leaves in a turbulent wind of complicated feelings, and as I conjured those memories, my brain tried desperately to pull me away towards the thrall of my ringing cellular phone. Sadly, the thrall won out, dragging me back to reality where I sat on the floor of my great room, surrounded by two boxes that I had pulled various items from and strewn the mess about the carpet. On the fourth ring of the phone, I answered it, not even looking to see who was calling.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Wirt,” came the voice of Dipper from the other end of the line. I hadn’t expected him to call me so soon after the party, especially since it was my intention to call him later that day. It was honestly quite a joy to hear his voice, as it felt like I had lived an eternity without hearing it despite it having been less than 24 hours since last I had spoken to him. “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“No, it’s not a bad time at all,” I said as I quickly put objects back into their respective boxes and shoved the mess aside to avoid any distractions as I spoke to Dipper. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to call and thank you for your gifts,” he said quietly. His tone was gentle and nervous and I quite liked it. It meant that the items I had placed in that box were well received. “They’re really nice and thoughtful and I just... I wanted to thank you as quickly as possible.”

I was really touched that he would go through the trouble to call me and personally thank me for a gift I had given him. “You’re welcome. I’m glad that you liked it all. It wasn’t too much, was it?”

“Not at all,” he said and I could hear the smile in his tone. “It was a nice surprise. I wasn’t even expecting you to get me a gift, let alone give me so many at once!”

I laughed lightly, moving my body from the floor and up onto the sofa. “Think of it as me making up for all the birthdays I missed.”

“If that’s the case, then Mabel might get jealous that you didn’t think to get her anything,” he chuckled. There was ambient sound in the background of his call, like someone rustling around, but I ignored it as much as I could. It was likely just his sister helping him with after-party cleanup.

“I don’t think I could even figure out what to get someone like her,” I said with another light laugh.

“Yeah, she’s definitely an odd duck, but she’s usually good at saying exactly what she wants, and if all else fails, she still accepts stuffed animals as gifts!”

“She really is a child at heart, isn’t she?” Truthfully, I loved that about her. She reminded me of Greg in that regard, with boundless optimism and joy filling their lives. The world needed people like them in it to brighten how dismal reality could be sometimes. They were the kinds of people who could effortlessly give everyone around them true happiness. “I hope she never grows out of that.”

Dipper made a noise in disapproval at that statement. “I think I would prefer it if she was just a _little_ less goofy all the time, but then she wouldn’t really be my sister, would she?”

“No,” I replied calmly, “she would still be your sister no matter what.”

There was a quiet that fell on the other end, the soft rustling in the background becoming the only sound I heard. A few long seconds passed before I heard him sigh on the other end, “I guess you’re right. I’d still love her no matter what.”

I heard a loud “ha!” from the background of the call, meaning that Mabel was listening in on our conversation, although she was only listening to Dipper’s half of it. The rustling noise became louder, soon followed by the sound of footsteps and Dipper’s breath. He was moving towards a more secluded location to talk to me, it seemed.

“So, uh,” I started, trying to fill the air with conversation again, “I called Greg this morning.”

“Oh, you did?” I could hear a door shutting. He must have gone into his bedroom, as I could hear the gentle tapping of rain echoing from the phone’s speaker, mirroring the sound of it against my window.

“Yeah, I asked him about the podcast interview that you suggested we do, and he agreed to it.”

I must have caught him off guard, or perhaps he had forgotten that he’d asked me to come onto his show at all, because he made a startled noise, only to cover it up quickly with a cough, “That’s great! The basement isn’t ready yet, so I’ll let you know when you can come over for the interview and we can pick a good time for Greg to do the internet call, too.”

“Well,” I said, my voice hitting a pitch that was far too high and far too nervous, “there’s just one thing I need to run by you before we can fully agree to the interview.”

“Of course!” he spoke quickly. “I’m sure it’s got to be a bit of a sensitive topic for you. If you need me to not ask certain questions or anything like that, I can make some notes of what I shouldn’t ask you.”

I shook my head, though he couldn’t see it, “N-no, it’s nothing like that. It’s, um... Do you remember when I told you the tale yesterday? How it seemed a bit like I had told this story a lot, like it was practiced?”

He hummed thoughtfully, “Yeah, it’s because you guys have probably told it to everyone over the years, right? It seems like the kind of thing you would tell people, even if they don’t believe you, like pretty much every story I have to tell about my life.” He chuckled a little.

“Haha, yeah, sort of?” I swallowed. “It’s actually turned into kind of a performance, telling the story of our time in the Unknown.”

“A performance?” He sounded curious.

“Yeah, with costumes and props and music.” Saying it out loud like this made me realize just how stupid this idea was. Podcasts aren’t a visual medium. “N-not that we would wear costumes for the podcast,” I clarified hurriedly. “It’s just... we do this whole thing... Because no one actually believed us, we turned it into a show for family gatherings and eventually we even did it at local places in town, like the library and the nursing home. We became unofficial storytellers, telling stories about ourselves in a fantastical place that no one else believes in.”

“Okay... and you want to do a performance for our interview?” He was sounding less curious and more confused.

“Not me! Greg wants to! And i-it wouldn’t be a real performance, either, j-just a few songs!” I was on the verge of shouting about how much this wasn’t my idea.

Dipper’s side of the conversation went uncomfortably quiet, likely as he was processing what I was trying to say. I knew this was going to be a stupid thing to tell Dipper, but if I hadn’t mentioned it, Greg would have just shown up on the call with a teapot on his head and every instrument known to mankind in front of him. I never wanted our time in the Unknown to become a spectacle like this. Reality necessitated that it become fiction instead of fact, against my better judgment.

“I don’t really understand what you’re saying,” Dipper finally said. “Can you give me an example?”

I let out a sigh, glad that he wasn’t upset that I had brought up something so ridiculous. “Um, sure? I don’t have my clarinet handy, but I can hum and sing a little...” I then sang a couple of songs, though with my voice alone they held half of their usual impact, and hummed some of the other music, too, explaining that Greg or I would play instruments under certain parts of the storytelling while the other spoke the tale. Dipper was mostly silent on the other end, which made it difficult to know if he was enjoying what he was hearing or not.

There were a few beats of silence before Dipper’s voice returned. “I didn’t know you could sing,” he said gently. “Your voice is nice.”

“Uh... thanks?” That was all I could muster. I was already embarrassed enough as it was.

Dipper sighed, “Greg really wants to perform songs for the interview?”

“I’m sorry, but yeah.” I wasn’t really sure why I was apologizing. It just felt like I needed to apologize. “I told him that it was a dumb idea, but he wanted me to ask you anyway.”

There was a long moment of hesitation on Dipper’s end, and it made my heart pound anxiously in my chest. “I’m going to be honest,” he spoke slowly. “I don’t like knowing that you’ve been performing your experience as some kind of show. If skeptics find out, they’ll think that you’re trying to get attention and monetize off of your experience. Hoaxers and experiencers alike are easily discredited when they use gimmicks to sell their experience to others. Now, I’m sure that you guys don’t get paid for telling your story, right?”

“N-no, not at all!”

“But skeptics will eat you alive if they learn that you guys do a performance of your experience, even if you don’t get paid to do it. You understand where I’m coming from, right?” His tone was incredibly serious. I had never heard him speak like this before.

“I understand,” I said quietly. “Greg will be disappointed that he can’t sing or play instruments for the show, but I told him that I just wanted to do the interview straight without gimmicks.”

“Well,” Dipper said thoughtfully, some of the seriousness of his previous words being lifted away, “if he really does want to sing and play music, we could record you both doing full versions of the songs and offer those files to donors.”

“Donors?”

“Yeah, the people who donate money to help me produce the show,” Dipper explained. “It’s not a lot, but it helps with some of the costs of making the show.”

I was confused. “You’re not a full-time podcaster?”

“What? No, way!” Dipper laughed loudly, “I’d be poor if I was only a podcaster! I have a real job!”

“Oh... That makes sense.” Of course he had a real job! I was a fool to think that he could buy such a big house without having a real income outside of podcasting.

“I’d love for the podcast to be my full-time job, but that’s just not possible right now,” he said wistfully. “When I was a kid, I wanted to have my own ghost hunting show, but that was just a pipe dream. Podcasting is a lot easier and cheaper and doesn’t require as much equipment or training or manpower to do. Anyone can make a podcast!”

For a second, I opened my mouth to ask what his actual job was, but quickly closed it and decided not to ask. I didn’t want to look even dumber than I did already. “Sorry for making such a stupid assumption,” was what I said instead.

“It wasn’t stupid,” Dipper replied gently. “I actually get that a lot from fans and random people on the internet. Podcasting gives me a little extra cash in my bank account to help with the production costs, but it’s not a big enough dent right now to make a living from. I haven’t been doing it long enough to have a ton of fans, and I’m not popular enough to make the same amount of money that other shows do. I’m not part of a podcast network and I haven’t gotten many sponsors willing to help me out. It’s mostly just me and a few online friends doing all the work of producing and editing and writing and recording and doing everything.”

“So that’s why you don’t update every week?”

Dipper hummed, “Before I had people donating money or offering their help, I was able to maybe push an episode out once every month or two, but now it’s every other week because I have more money to throw at people who want to help with research or writing or whatever. I pay them what I can and they aid me how they can.”

“I see...” This was more enlightening than I thought it would be, but I felt like we had taken a wild tangent. “So... I should tell Greg that we can still do some songs, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dipper said as though he had forgotten what we were originally talking about. “If songs are that important to his experience, then recording some of that will be fun for the people who want to hear them. We could maybe include one or two songs into the actual interview, but only if they make sense in the context of the story. And if he wants to provide some background music for the mood, then that would be fine, too. The skeptics might still come after you, though, but at least it will only be the skeptics who paid money to get angry at your songs!”

I laughed politely, glad that he wasn’t going to completely derail my brother’s idea. Greg would definitely be a little disheartened that he wouldn’t be able to go all out for the interview, but hopefully the knowledge that Dipper would let him do recordings of his songs and make them available for people to listen to would cheer him up. There was just one thing that I knew he wouldn’t like, though. “Are you sure you can’t make the songs free for everyone? It doesn’t feel right making them exclusive to certain, special people...”

“It’s up to you,” he said with finality in his tone. “If you want them to be free for everyone, then whatever songs we don’t include in the episode in full, I’ll add to the show notes.”

“Do that, please,” I replied quickly. “It would make Greg happy to know people can hear his music freely.”

Dipper hummed in response, “Then that’s what we’ll do. And, um... I did want to ask you something unrelated to this.”

I blinked at the sudden turn in the conversation, but allowed it to happen. “Sure, what’s up?”

His mouth made a noise as though trying to find the right way to pronounce whatever words he was intending to speak. “I-I’d like to know if, uh... if you’d like to come over sometime so we can play a proper game of DD&MD together.”

A chuckle left my lips. Of course he wanted to play that silly game with me! “I don’t see why not... Just name a day and time, and I’ll tell you if I’m available.”

“Saturday,” he said firmly. “Two weeks from now. At noon.”

He already had everything planned out, it seemed. “All right. I should be free that day. Do you... want me to bring lunch for us?”

“Sure, yeah!” There was the sound of relief in his voice. Was he really that nervous about asking me to play a fantasy game with him? “I’ve got plenty of drinks and snacks here, too, for whenever we get hungry after lunch.”

“Okay, then I’ll text you before I leave and ask what you feel like for lunch. How does that sound?”

“Great!” He sounded so giddy, like a youngster excited for a trip to an amusement park. I suppose for him, this was almost the same kind of experience. For a moment, I wondered if I would ever feel that kind of excitement over something so simple. Lately my life had been rather joyless and mundane, but now I could feel light reaching my soul again, seeking to revive bits of my core into a beautiful field of color and mirth. Like the constellation that was his nickname, his light was guiding me somewhere familiar and safe and warm. It was the guiding light of home, and it was making my heart yearn for him even more. This happiness that he was exuding was something I felt that I needed to maintain and protect at all costs.

“I’ll see you in two weeks, then,” I said and I hoped that my voice sent to him the fondness I felt for him.

“Yeah, see you then!” There was an abruptness to his voice that made me hesitate in ending the call. “Oh, and... thanks again for the gifts.” Ah, yes. That was why he called me in the first place, wasn’t it? “I could tell that you put a lot of thought into what you gave me, more so than anyone other than Mabel, and I really appreciate that. I’ll make sure to listen to that tape whenever Mabel isn’t snooping around.” He let out a short laugh, “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Mm-hm, goodbye, Dipper.”

“Bye, Wirt!”

The merry tone of the call ending chirped in my ear and I let out a long sigh, my gaze drifting to the window. The rain had stopped some time ago and birds were sweetly singing in the trees as the sun struggled to direct her light through the gradually parting clouds. Thin streams of sunlight drifted downward like long strands of golden hair piercing the muddy sky. Every time I heard Dipper’s voice it was more confirmation that I had never gotten over my crush on him. Those strands of light from the sky could easily be needles, striking through the feeble armor of lies that I had wrapped myself in to hide myself from thinking about how much it hurt when Dipper never tried to contact me before now. I had always wondered what our lives would have been like if we had stayed together as a couple. Would we have stayed together forever? I had always assumed that my feelings for him were just the crush of an adolescent who knew little of the world, but whenever I thought back on those feelings, I remembered them being far more mature than any other feelings I had back then or even had in my present adulthood. Whatever our relationship was back then, it was important and valuable to my growth as an individual, and perhaps it was my placing so much value on those feelings that made me continue to pine for him even after I should have long forgotten that he existed. The arrow of time and love skewered my heart completely back then and I never properly recovered.

As a patch of sunlight beamed down onto the vibrant green grass of spring, I tried to push those feelings away, even if it hurt me to do so.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People used to tell my brother and me that we would eventually grow distant, that our interests would diverge so completely that we wouldn't have anything to talk about. They were incredibly wrong. Even though he and I have a lot of different interests, we still maintain enough similar interests to be good friends. Also, having so many shared experiences means that it's easier for us to get along with each other. We've been together for over 30 years. Even though we work in different fields and have different friends (for the most part), we can still get together once a week and hang out without it being weird or awkward. Just last week we went to see a movie together. We always watch movies together. If he needs to buy new clothes for a big work presentation, then he hits me up and we go to the mall together. Heck, we've even been to concerts and musicals and other things together, just because we know that the other will be available for even the most oddball event imaginable. And the thing is, I spent a lot of my life waiting for that moment when he and I would no longer be close to each other, but it didn't happen. I have a coworker who is also a fraternal twin and she has the same feelings. She's never felt a rift between herself and her twin brother, even after they both grew up and got married and had kids. They still hang out and do stuff. They're still extremely close. I'll never understand why there's this myth that siblings have to eventually grow apart as they age. People are different. Some siblings do grow distant. Some families do fall apart. However, every familial dynamic is different.
> 
> One thing that will never get old, though, is the look of shock on people's faces when my brother and I proclaim that we're twins. We don't look alike at all. We barely look like we're related. The next fun thing is their disappointment when they find out that we don't have matching "twin" names.

Mabel stayed for a couple more days, helping with getting the party cleaned up and with getting the basement set up. It was going to take a while before everything was ready to go down there, but I wasn’t in a rush. I wanted to take my time to make sure that everything was set up properly and not slapped together haphazardly, which was how Mabel tended to do things when she was left to her own devices.

Honestly, it was nice having her around to help with everything. I was still getting used to living alone for the first time in a place that was entirely my own. It felt weirdly uncomfortable just because I wasn’t used to it yet. I was also still getting used to the fact that Mabel was so far away now. I couldn’t just hop in my truck and drive 45 minutes to her place like I used to. Our Friday night family dinners had morphed into Friday night phone calls, making the distance even more concrete. We’d been apart before, but never like this. This was a permanent move and it was stressing me out a little. It made me realize just how much I relied on her being available for whenever I needed someone to talk to about nothing in particular. Funnily enough, I could feel myself getting nostalgic for the sound of her voice yelling nonsense into my ears. I’m sure she was feeling the same way, too. I was the person she went to first whenever she was feeling down after a bad date and I was always available to go to a movie or the mall with her so she didn’t have to go by herself. We always experienced our lives together. Even as we aged, our bond continued to hold tightly. In the end, that fear of eventually growing distant as we got older never became a reality. We were still each other’s best friend.

Which is why it hurt me more than I wanted to admit as I watched her drive away, leaving me truly alone. We would see each other for holidays and for our birthday, but there was definitely an odd feeling of pain as I watched her go. I guess there really is some kind of mysterious link between twins, even fraternal ones. We tried to make our parting as casual as possible, but it was still pretty awkward and I’m sure it hurt for her as much as it hurt for me; the distance meant that I wouldn’t be able to comfort her like I used to before. I wasn’t really that good at comforting her anyway, but I’m sure she appreciated my feeble attempts at comfort. Besides, I was going to hear her voice again on Friday night. Things would be okay.

In my empty house, all alone, I set about finishing what Mabel and I had started together in the basement, as well as trying to put together a simple one-shot campaign for when Wirt arrived for his first ever game of DD&MD. I didn’t have time to wallow in my newfound sensation of loneliness as I had to setup everything for the podcast, create a simple-yet-challenging dungeon for Wirt, and also work at my actual real job. There were only so many hours in the day for me to be sad, so I didn’t bother to be sad at all. Instead, I worked with research for my upcoming interview with Wirt and Greg, put together a new desk and covered it with all my podcasting equipment, organized my library so that I could more easily research for future episodes, created a dungeon and enemy character stats for the game, and somehow managed to eat and sleep and watch TV and go to work. Keeping busy wasn’t exactly the smartest way to deal with my emotions, but it was a good enough solution at the time. And it wasn’t like I was really without people around me who cared for me. Everyone in town still regarded me as a friend, and Wirt was just a couple hours away. It wouldn’t be the same as having Mabel around, but it felt like it could be enough for now.

Being so busy meant that time passed by more quickly, and soon enough another Friday arrived. Mabel and I had a long conversation about nothing in particular, and eventually she asked if I had “made progress” with Wirt, whatever that meant. Her fantasy of me getting back together with Wirt was getting a bit irritating. I, of course, told her that it wasn’t like that – Wirt and I were only friends. And we were definitely only friends as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t looking for anyone to date at the time, and I didn’t have time to even think about dating anyone as it was. Her fantasy was simply that: a fantasy.

“You say that,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure it won’t stay like that. You guys still have chemistry!”

“Yeah,” I replied quickly. “It’s the chemistry of ‘friendship.’ Two people are allowed hang out and do stuff together without it being a date.”

She giggled like she knew something that I didn’t. “You’ll see! I’m definitely right on this one, I know it!”

I sighed heavily, “No, you’re not, but believe what you want.”

“So when’s this nerd date you’re doing with him?” I could hear her smirking from across state lines.

“It’s not a date,” I growled, “and it’s next Saturday. I’ve almost got everything ready. I really just need to think about what kinds of pre-generated characters I should provide in case he doesn’t want to make his own.”

“Boooorriiiiiiinngggg!!” She made snoring noises to punctuate how much this information was of no interest to her.

I clicked my tongue, “You’ve played it before and liked it.”

“That’s because you got trapped in the game by that math-spewing wizard guy and his hot elf sidekick and I had to rescue you,” she yawned.

“If you actually sat down and played it, you’d probably love it.” We’d had this conversation multiple times over the years and it always ended the same way.

“Not a chance,” she said firmly. “I’ve got the image of being the cool twin to maintain.”

And there it was. “Well, I’m not even in the state anymore to bug you about it, so now you don’t have to hear me try convincing you to join me ever again.”

There was an odd pause on her end that lasted longer than I thought it should. I could hear her breath against the receiver, though. I couldn’t fathom what she was thinking.

“I’m gonna miss that,” she finally said. She sounded... sad.

I let in a slow breath, trying to figure out a good way to make her not sad anymore. “Well, uh... there are online game tools for DD&MD. We could play on the internet, if you wanted to. It’s not really the same as playing at a table with friends, but it’s close enough.”

She let out a soft laugh, “I guess you can still try convincing me, then.”

We talked for a little longer about other things, unimportant things. She told me about a new sweater she was knitting and about how she managed to find a VHS tape of a concert featuring one of her favorite older boy bands. I told her about the research I was doing into near-death experiences and about a new TV show I was watching that she might also enjoy. It was comforting chatting with her about the boring bits of life. It almost felt like we were still near each other, even though there were so many miles separating us. We talked until we both were too tired to talk, then vowed to talk again next Friday before hanging up.

The next week sped by just as quickly as the last, as though it was hurrying itself so that I could see Wirt again. As Mabel and I promised, we called each other the Friday before DD&MD day, and again she made wild claims that perhaps Wirt and I should date again, as though it was fated for us to be together. I repeated to her that that wasn’t going to happen and she maintained her belief that it absolutely would. There was no swaying her otherwise. At least I could commend her on her tenacity.

However, it did remind me that I needed to listen to the cassette tape that Wirt had given me as a gift. Mabel was nice enough to let me keep her old karaoke machine for the sole purpose of using the tape player, mainly because she had recently bought a brand new one that was, in her words, “50 bajillion times more awesome” than her old one. The only cassette tapes I owned were of Wirt’s poetry, so it seemed a bit silly to have this big machine at my house for just two tapes, but it might come in handy someday, for all I knew.

Mabel had the karaoke machine set up in the spare bedroom she had been staying in, waiting for me to eventually slip this new tape into it. I brought with me the neat bundle of writing that was the transcripts for the poems on the tape and rested myself on the floor beside the machine. I wasn’t sure what to expect. There was an anxious feeling in my stomach that was sitting somewhere between dread and anticipation. I wasn’t one for understanding the mystical quality of poetry, but I knew I would appreciate the gesture no matter how terrible or strange the poetry was. I pushed play and let Wirt’s words find their way to my ears, vibrating pleasantly against my tympanum.

His poetry had greatly improved, or it seemed like it had from the last time. I could feel his emotions with each word he spoke, and there was a trembling to his voice that meant that he must have been nervous when he recorded these. Each poem seemed to tell something about him, but I wasn’t good enough at interpreting poetry to really understand what anything really meant. All I could do was speculate on what they might have really been about, assuming that there was any deeper meaning at all. There was a poem about a bluebird, likely meant as homage to the bluebird he mentioned in his fantastical NDE. There was also an odd one about a bee who fell in love with a flower, which seemed to be about unrequited love. I began to pick out recurring motifs – the stars as guides for wayward travelers, the moon as a watchful protector, and the sun as a nurturing mother figure. It wasn’t until I was a few minutes into the B-side that I realized his poems were themed for the seasons, and that each season changed in order. It started in spring, moved to summer, and the B-side began in autumn as it led slowly towards winter. I was beginning to think he was fibbing when he said he’d recorded this quickly. This was clearly planned out.

The last poem came with a warning from Wirt. This was the poem he had mentioned in the letter, the one that he wrote for me those many years ago. His warning was more for the quality of the piece and less of the content, but I had already listened to so much poetry that my brain was a bit tired. It was getting late, after all, and I had to make final DD&MD preparations in the morning before Wirt arrived. By this point, I was laying on the guest bed, looking up at the ceiling as I held the bundle of poetry pages in my hand. I’d looked at a few of the pages to read along, but it was much more of an experience just listening to the words blindly. I blinked up at the overhead light as Wirt let in a deep breath and read aloud the final poem.

 

> **Frozen**
> 
> It felt like a distant memory,  
>  Though only a short time passed.  
>  You pierced my heart as sunlight  
>  And faded it with your radiance.
> 
> You filled up my void too easily,  
>  And you filled it so cleanly,  
>  Washing out all my colors  
>  As you glided in and out of me.
> 
> The blanching was so slow and thorough,  
>  Like dust on an old photo  
>  Seated on an aged mantle,  
>  Struggling to remember itself.
> 
> I had made myself weak to your light  
>  As it scattered throughout me,  
>  But its strength would destroy me.  
>  You left me out in the cold darkness.
> 
> The thaw of spring comes so late this year  
>  And keeps me frozen in place  
>  Within that moment of time  
>  When I left and you remained behind.

He really did have some feelings about how I never called him after we parted, and those feelings were the opposite of “okay.” The tape clicked to its end and I left it in the tape player, staring up at the ceiling. Enough time had passed between when that poem was written and now, but it still bothered me that I'd made him feel so sad just because I was too scared to call him. Wirt had made it pretty clear that he didn’t have any ill feelings towards me, yet I still felt retroactively bad about bruising his teenage heart.

Eventually, I moved myself out of the guest bedroom and into my own, shutting the door and collapsing onto my bed. I needed to get some sleep before the big day tomorrow. I hadn’t played DD&MD in months and this needed to go well. Even if I was still feeling a little bad about accidentally destroying teen-Wirt’s heart, I could at least make up for that mistake by being a good friend to him in the present. In order for that good friendship to happen, though, I needed to make sure that he had a great time playing DD&MD with me. It didn’t need to be perfect – just fun. I hoped my simple one-shot campaign wouldn’t be too easy for him. That was my biggest worry as I drifted off into slumber, the distant rattling of pots and pans in the kitchen being a lullaby as I slept. The ghosts seemed to be in a good mood, which I supposed was a good omen.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A high school boyfriend was the one to introduce me to D&D back when I was 15 or 16. He explained D&D to me in the same overly complicated and nerdy way that Dipper explained DD&MD to Mabel in the DD&MD episode. Of course no one would want to play your dumb game with so much math and so many rules!
> 
> However, he was incredibly persistent in wanting me to play the game with him, so I told him that I'd do it if my brother could come. I'm sure, to my boyfriend, having his girlfriend's twin brother be involved was the cockblock of the century, but there was no way I was going to spend 5+ hours in a room full of horny straight teenage white boys with me as the only female presence. Which is why I asked my brother to come along to watch out for me. He and I were of the same opinion back then, that D&D was the lowest of the low for a nerd to be into and that this would make us somehow unclean to run in our already deeply nerdy circles.
> 
> It turned out that my brother and I both loved playing D&D and it didn't ruin our nerd reputations. That boyfriend is long gone from my life, but D&D is still there for me and my brother. The people in our games have changed over the years as we've gained and lost friends, yet our love of the game persists. My brother has been my dungeon master for somewhere around 15 years now and he's incredible at it!
> 
> Honestly, the moral of the story is if you're wanting to convince someone to play D&D with you, tell them it's a collaborative storytelling exercise involving imagination and chance. After that, then you can start telling them about skill checks.

The day of playing tabletop games with Dipper had finally arrived and I was very nervous. I wasn’t sure what I was nervous about, whether it was being alone with Dipper for several hours or if I was just nervous about looking stupid while playing Dipper’s favorite game, but I was incredibly nervous for an unknowable reason.

The day before, I had wandered into the game shop near my house that I had driven by nearly every day without passing a glance to ordinarily, and sought to buy a set of polyhedral dice for the game. They came in beautiful colors and designs, which made the task of buying them more difficult as there wasn’t a “default” set. I chose a set of dice that had swirls of green and gold in them that shimmered with glitter in sunlight. I questioned whether I would use them again, but I decided that they might come in handy some day outside of a fantasy role play setting. The percentile dice looked like something that could be used for many things, and the dice with higher values could be used when needing to make choices in the real world. My brain simply rationalized how these dice could one day be useful, though deep down I knew that I would scarcely use them for anything at all. I carried them with me on the long drive to Dipper’s home, keeping the dice safe in a messenger bag that held a notepad and a few pencils and a scientific calculator. The calculator was because I knew that this game had a lot of math to it and I didn’t truly trust the calculator in my smart phone. Even with Greg constantly telling me that I could trust the calculator in my phone, I really didn’t trust it at all.

Before I left, I called Dipper to ask what he wanted me to pick up for lunch, as promised. We talked back and forth about different meal options before deciding on picking up a pizza. Dipper would call in the order, and I would pick it up on my way to his house. It seemed like a decent plan of action. “It’s a traditional gaming meal,” he explained. I couldn’t argue with tradition.

We agreed on toppings and I drove off towards his house, listening to an episode of Dipper’s podcast that was about terrifying beings known as black-eyed kids. I didn’t run the risk of scaring myself from sleep due to it being so early in the day, but it was definitely not a cheerful topic. How did he even learn about things like black-eyed kids or the Sallie House or the Philadelphia Project? I supposed if you seek out the strange, then you’ll eventually encounter it, and he was definitely the type to seek out the weird and unexplainable in order to document and understand it. Even back in the twilight of his teenage years he sought out the odd and impossible. I remember how he introduced me to his more monstrous friends that summer, and how they seemed so friendly compared the monsters he talked about on his podcast. Perhaps it was because of this that he garnered interest in the darker creatures of lore, but I doubted that I would ever know the truth.

I arrived at his house a little past noon, as it took longer to obtain the pizza than I had anticipated, but Dipper greeted me warmly just the same. It was now twice that I had arrived at his house later than I wanted to. He led me in and I reacquainted myself with the home, noting that there were more items in the rooms. He and Mabel must have cleared out more of the boxes that had been piled in the basement and put those items in their new permanent locations. It also felt more lived in, with decorations on the formerly bare walls.

The twins had been busy, it seemed.

But the part of the house that was the most transformed was the basement, which was where Dipper had decided to hold our dungeon delving adventure. What had been a space filled with unopened boxes and half finished furniture now looked almost complete. All of the podcasting equipment had been set up at one end of the basement, the other end was lined in bookshelves stocked with books and oddities, and the center of the basement had a large folding table set up as the main attraction for today. On the plastic table were fancy cardboard tiles with pictures as the layout for the adventure Dipper had planned, which looked to be an upgrade from the traditional method of using graph paper with hand drawn doodles. There were little plastic crystals and rock formations and a door meant to represent the entrance to the dungeon, as well as a small town set up outside of the dungeon made of tiles with a tavern layout on them. At one end of the long table was a standing piece of folded cardboard with an intricate fantasy scene on it, and behind it I could see stacks of books and note cards and little figurines and a large bag of dice, as well as a calculator not unlike the one I had brought with me.

Dipper took the pizza from my hands and placed it on his podcasting desk, where he had already prepared plates and napkins and a couple of bags of chips. As I watched him preparing what was to be our snack table, I noticed that he added a mini fridge to the farthest corner, which made the place feel more like a man cave. In a way, it was exactly the type of man cave that someone like Dipper would have, with strange equipment and fantasy gaming supplies and a hoard of books on the paranormal and the supernatural. It was all like flashing neon marking that this was Dipper’s personal territory.

He opened the fridge and brought out two cans of soda, offering one of them to me before pulling slices of pizza from the pizza box and placing them onto a pair of plates. With the pizzas and sodas now distributed, we finally sat ourselves at the long plastic table, eating and chatting about things unrelated to the coming adventure. The chairs we sat in still had grass stains and dirt on them from when they were set up for the housewarming party, and the table also had a bit of dry mud caked onto its legs. It was nice knowing that Dipper was able to reuse the items from the party for his own needs, and I had a feeling that with a house this big, he would likely be needing to use this folding furniture for yet more gatherings with family and friends in the future.

“Was Greg upset that he won’t be able to go all out for the interview?” Dipper’s body was mostly obscured by his game master screen, which made him look like a floating head above the fantasy scene on it.

“Not at all,” I said between bites of pizza. In the time between our last phone call and today, I had managed to contact Greg with what Dipper had told me. “He’s just happy that you’re letting him sing at all.” Which was the truth. Greg was a little disheartened, but he accepted the fact that doing too much for what was essentially a radio program was just not possible. We decided to use our Sunday calls to not just chat about our weeks, but also coordinate just how we were going to record music for the podcast. Gregory had figured out how to record audio onto his computer, but he didn’t know how to properly clean it up yet. We would eventually have to ask Dipper how to do that, but that would come at a later time.

“Like I said, if it’s important to his experience, then I want to include it,” he said before taking a long drink of soda.

I let out a short laugh, looking down at my own soda. “I know it seems silly, but it really is important to him,” I mused quietly. “To both of us, actually. There are songs I remember from the Unknown that I don’t share with others because they’re personal to me.”

Dipper nodded as he bit into his pizza, chewing and swallowing before speaking again, “I absolutely understand that. I’m just worried that trolls on the internet will attack you guys for it.”

I shrugged, “I don’t really have an internet presence as it is, and neither does Greg. Besides, we both agreed to not use our full names on the program. We’ll just be Wirt and Greg.”

“All right,” Dipper sighed as he got up to grab another slice of pizza, “but if I see anyone online saying bad things about either of you, I’ll make sure to come to your defense.”

“Like a knight in shining internet armor?” I chuckled lightly.

“The internet already thinks I’m some kind of social justice warrior, so I might as well live up to the ‘warrior’ part of that title!” He laughed as he sat back down at his seat of power behind the game master screen, his pizza plate now refreshed with two more slices. “Right now, though, I’m the game master and you’re the player character.”

I nodded a little, sensing a shift in his mood. It seemed like he was putting on a game master air and I needed to prepare myself for battle. “You’re going to explain all the terms and rules again, right? It’s been a while since we talked about how to play this game.” I gestured to everything that was set up on the table before me. “Oh, and I bought a set of dice for today. Is that okay?”

Dipper grinned widely, “Really?! That’s great! You’re on the path to becoming a true gamer!”

The idea of being a true gamer seemed outlandish to me, but I smiled anyway. It appeared that obtaining a set of dice was the right course of action in preparing for today. I cleaned the pizza grease from my hands with a paper napkin and began to pull everything I had brought with me from my bag. The dice had come in a clear plastic container that I had yet to open, and I placed it on the table with my notepad and calculator and a pencil. I didn’t have any of the fancy hardcover books that Dipper had on the other side of the game master screen, and I hoped that wouldn’t be to my detriment. I saw those books at the game store and they were a little too pricey for me to justify purchasing for a single game day.

Dipper re-explained the rules to me, telling me about how the newest version of the game was modified to help bring newer players into the fold so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the amount of math that was needed to play the game. Apparently it was getting popular because of its simpler rules and doing exactly what the publishers had intended with the improvements. He got a little off topic as he explained the differences between older versions and this newer version, and I reveled in how animated and expressive he was over something so simple as a role playing game.

He then helped me choose what character class and race that I should play, weighing pros and cons and showing me the little figurines that he had acquired over the years which would be my proxy on the grid-marked cardboard tiles. I decided to go with a half-dragon bard that could breathe lightning. Dipper explained that bards could both fight and cast magic, and were useful support characters that could also fight solo if necessary. He also approved greatly of my choice of playing a half-dragon, because they were great with both fighting ability and magic casting ability. I wasn’t entirely sure what all of that meant, but he seemed delighted at my choices. I rolled my dice, did some simple math, and soon, with Dipper’s help, I had a character sheet ready for Retar Thorntooth, the half-dragon bard.

Finally, the adventure could begin. The story setup was pretty simple: The son of the mayor of a small town had been kidnapped by goblins and taken to a nearby cave. It was my mission to save the child. Dipper provided me with two extra party members that he could insert into combat, but left the majority of the decision making up to me so I wouldn’t have to rely on what he called “NPCs” to do everything for me. The NPCs he chose to aid me in me in my quest were a dwarf fighter and a human wizard. There was a bit of fumbling around with figuring out how to read my character sheet and learning what all of my character’s abilities were and how to cast spells, but by the end of the game, I felt like I was finally able to understand what I was doing. The dungeon itself had a few puzzles and traps that definitely weren’t easy, but weren’t too terribly hard, and Dipper praised me whenever I remembered to use my bard’s abilities instead of relying on what I, as Wirt, would do in the situation. I was starting to understand that playing a role playing game really did mean that you had to step into the shoes of the character, to play the role of the character almost like an actor. Dipper would change his voice and mannerisms for each character that I came in contact with in the game, and eventually I found my own voice for Retar. It was almost like a performance without an audience.

The last room of the dungeon, where the kidnapped child was being held, had no traps or puzzles but instead was a full-scale combat situation. In that final room was the leader of the goblins: a half-dragon necromancer who was flanked by several undead foes. It was the only time that I truly needed the help of the NPCs to overcome something Dipper had thrown at me. He gave me the character sheets for the fighter and the wizard and I ended up playing three roles at the same time, all while Dipper walked me through how each character worked. Eventually, Retar and the NPCs took down the undead foes and their necromancer leader, which allowed us to free the kidnapped child and gain a reward and favor from the mayor of the town. We ended with Retar singing a song in the tavern about the characters’ exploits of the day, which I had to roll dice for in order to make sure my bard sang well enough, and with a 21 on my performance, he sang so well that the whole tavern joined in the song!

“And that’s the end of the quest,” Dipper said as he fell out of his game master voice. “What did you think?”

I laughed, “It was great! I was afraid that there would be so much more math than what there was. It was mainly just us and our imaginations.”

“Exactly!” Dipper grinned as he gathered up the figurines of my fallen foes and placed them on his side of the game master screen. “Imagine if we had more people to play with. It’s even more fun with a table full of people bouncing ideas off of each other!”

“If I knew more people who would want to play,” I said slowly as I gathered up my things, “then I could ask them to play with us, but everyone I know is into more, uh, ‘normal’ activities.”

Dipper sighed, “Yeah, most ‘normal’ people think this game is too nerdy, and it’s hard to change their minds on it until they’ve actually played it... but getting them to play is the challenge because it’s seen as something that virgin man-children do in their basements while dressed in cloaks and doing satanic rituals or something.”

“Well, we did just play it in a basement,” I hummed.

“I wouldn’t describe either of us as man-children, though,” Dipper chuckled.

I laughed lightly, “I have been known to wear a cloak on occasion... just not in a basement while doing satanic rituals.”

“I bet you look good in a cloak,” Dipper mused as he sorted his spell cards, putting them back in the “spell books” he made for them, which were just binders filled with trading card sheets labeled for each type of spell caster.

I shrugged, then sorted through the character sheets and placed the ones for the wizard and fighter at the other end of the table, “It’s been a while since I last wore it, but I could break it out if we ever play this game together again, though I doubt Retar Thorntooth would wear something like that.”

“I’ve never played this game while in costume,” Dipper laughed, then stopped abruptly as though a stray memory slipped by unannounced. “At least, not of my own free will.”

That piqued my interest instantly. “So you’ve played DD&MD while wearing a costume and you’re not going to talk about it?”

Dipper’s mouth made a noise that I was unfamiliar with and he looked away from me, busying himself with clearing away the cardboard tiles on the table. “It’s not really that interesting of a story...”

That meant it was definitely an interesting story. “If it’s not that interesting, then you shouldn’t be embarrassed to tell it,” I said as I tried not to laugh. My mind was chanting at how cute Dipper’s face looked in that moment, and I was indulging in that sentiment wholly. It wasn’t even that I wanted to know what the story was, but more that I wanted to see his cute, embarrassed face for just a little longer. I could catch the hint of a blush from behind his glasses, the glare of the harsh fluorescent light above us doing nothing to hide the growing pink at his cheeks.

He paused for a moment in his movements before sitting himself back down at his seat of power behind the cardboard fantasy screen. He heaved a large sigh, and I followed his motion, sitting back in my chair at the other end of the long plastic table. “This happened a long time ago, before I met you, so don’t laugh, okay?” I nodded, trying to look serious, though from my vantage point I could see his blushing cheeks perfectly and I liked it a lot. He then told the tale of how an impossible die known as an infinity die, which somehow had an infinite number of sides, was accidentally rolled and summoned forth the main villain of the DD&MD series at the time, a diabolical wizard named Probabilator. Dipper and his great-uncle Ford were then sucked into the game – they both were elves, apparently, but were different character classes – and were at the mercy of their siblings in order to survive a deadly real life version of the game. It sounded absolutely preposterous, and thus I knew it had to be a true story.

As promised, I didn’t laugh. Instead, I smiled, “Your family has always come through for you, no matter what danger you’re in.”

“Yeah,” he said, his flush cheeks having returned to their normal shade. “Mabel and Stan really came through for us back then.”

Their camaraderie as a family made me wish my family was so close. I still wasn’t that close with my brother, even after we had gone through a harrowing experience in our youth. There was still an awkward rift between myself and my step-father, and I wasn’t even very close to my mother after she remarried. When I was younger, I was creating that rift as a kind of punishment for her and for everyone, but now that I was an adult, I felt an incredible amount of regret for having created that rift at all. I had tried to repair it time and time again, but the chasm was so great that any progress in creating a bridge to the other side seemed entirely futile. Dipper said something similar happened between his great-uncles, and they managed to mend the gap with time, so I remained hopeful that with each small step I took towards making that long bridge to the other side of that rift would help. Fording the gap with Greg would be the easiest, I thought at the time, but the one between my parents was wider and deeper.

I felt myself being quiet for far too long, and soon I spoke again to fill the silence, “Hey, um... until you can find more players, I wouldn’t mind coming back and playing again.” It was the truth. I had honestly enjoyed playing and I found myself feeling a kinship with the character of Retar.

“Really?” Dipper looked a little stunned, as though the idea of us playing again was somehow farfetched.

“Of course,” I smiled softly. “Today was fun. I don’t even know how long we’ve been down here playing, but it feels like it was no time at all.”

Dipper pulled out his phone from his jeans pocket, glancing at the time, “Oh, man... it’s almost 7pm.”

“What?!” I searched for my own phone, pulling it out and seeing the digital numbers telling me that it was 6:56pm. “We’ve been here for 7 hours... I didn’t even realize it.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say,” Dipper laughed.

“It really does,” I said as I shoved my phone back in my pocket. I took a glance at the snack table behind me. The pizza had vanished, the bags of chips were nearly finished, and empty soda cans were piled high in the nearby trash can. I had lived the life of a gamer for the first time ever, and it actually felt great.

“Do you want to try this again next week?” Dipper said as he stretched, letting out a yawn.

I shook my head, “Making this a weekly thing might be too much for me.” Spending 7 hours in a dark basement with no clock every weekend was probably not good for my sanity. “We could try for once a month. That way it doesn’t interfere with my normal weekend plans.”

“Like what?” He seemed genuinely curious.

“I like to go antiquing every now and then,” I said as I put my bag over my shoulder, preparing myself to leave once again, “and watch local theatre performances and go to the symphony and to museums. All that must sound boring, but I like it.”

Dipper shook his head quickly, “Not at all. If it’s what you enjoy, then it’s not boring at all. I haven’t gone to a lot of plays, but the ones I’ve seen were really good... and all that other stuff sounds fun, too. I’ve always liked visiting museums!”

He seemed genuinely sincere, which made me happy. “You can come with me sometime.”

“I’d like that,” he said shyly before letting out a small cough. “If I told Mabel, she would say it was a date, though...”

“Hanging out with a friend at a museum isn’t a date,” I said gently.

“If only Mabel understood that,” he chuckled. “O-okay, so we’ll play DD&MD once a month, and every once in a while we can hang out at a thing that you enjoy. How’s that sound?”

“Perfect,” I smiled and hoped that my tone wasn’t too strange. My voice sounded strange, like I was straining to not sound disappointed. Honestly, the idea of dating Dipper again was something that I had dreamed of, but if he just wanted to be friends, then I would settle for that. Being able to see him often should be enough to satisfy my desires, right? It seemed like enough at the time.

“Good! Then let’s set up our next game!”

We both checked our calendars and settled on another free Saturday to play the game, which would allow enough time for Dipper to devise a more challenging dungeon for me to traverse as I acclimated myself to the rules of the game. In addition, we set up a time to see each other for an unrelated adventure, which was seeing a local production of _Annie_ together in a couple of weeks. I remember wanting everything to work out between us – that I could be fine with only being his friend and nothing more – yet I could feel the temptation of wanting more eating away at me. I was dooming myself and I was trying desperately to ignore that sensation.

I left his house in the fading sunlight of spring, the solstice having yet to crest the daylight hours, and I again listened to music on my way home from his house. I had heard only Dipper’s voice for the entire day and I feared that keeping his words in my mind would only reveal impure thoughts. I had already had the fleeting curiosity to know if he was still a virgin when the word slipped from his lips. There was no way that he was, and there was a jealous feeling in my stomach at the idea that he gave himself to someone that wasn’t me. Of course he did! I had done the same years ago! It was so odd for me to feel jealousy over something that was so meaningless, and it made me uncomfortable. My obvious crush on Dipper Pines was mutating in a way that I didn’t like. I needed to figure out how to cut away those cancerous thoughts and desires, or else I would end up hating myself for what I was becoming. Dipper didn’t want to date me – or anyone, it seemed – and I needed to make myself be okay with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wirt's dice are Chessex's Gemini series dice, the gold and green ones with the white numbers on them. I see them all the time at their booth when I go to Gen Con. I'll probably buy them some day.
> 
> The "spell book" binders are an idea my brother stole from someone he played with in Adventure League. D&D has these laminated spell cards that you can buy which make playing a spell caster a little easier, since you don't have to spend so much time flipping through the spell list at the back of the PHB. All you need is a 3-ring binder and some trading card sheets for MTG or YGO or whatever. It's made combat go a whole lot faster!


	12. Chapter 12

Cleaning up after a long day of tabletop gaming was always a chore, but it didn’t feel as terrible this time. Wirt seemed to enjoy the game, and that knowledge made me feel much more at ease than usual about clearing away the trash. Plus, not having to worry about setting up another dungeon for a couple weeks was nice. Before moving to Gravity Falls, my old coworkers and I would play every week with me as their game master, and it was a lot of work having to always prepare for everything. There was one time we met up and I had absolutely nothing prepared for the players because I'd been way too busy with real life obligations to put anything together, so I just improvised an entire campaign and no one suspected that I hadn’t prepared in advance. It meant that all those years of playing had paid off, but that was the most stressful campaign day ever; I’d much rather have something prepared ahead of time instead of pulling things out of thin air.

Still, I had a feeling that even if I hadn’t prepared anything at all, Wirt would have enjoyed himself regardless. I was beginning to suspect that perhaps Wirt still had a boyish crush on me, but I didn’t let that thought stay too long in my mind. I didn’t want to believe that after all these years he was still not over me, even after he had said that he most definitely was. There was no way for me to know at the time unless I asked him directly, which I was not going to do. There wasn’t a need for me to do something like that. I wasn’t a mind reader; I couldn’t intuit if he was lying to me about his feelings. Asking him outright would just make things awkward, anyway. Yet I still wondered, even if it was just a whisper at the back of my mind.

Mabel called the next day while I was doing research for the podcast and yelled boisterously into my ear, “So how did your nerd date go?!”

I groaned, “It wasn’t a date, and it went well.”

“I knew it!” She was laughing so loudly that I had to pull the phone away from my ear.

“Mabel, it’s not like that!” She wasn’t going to let this go.

“Oh, Dipper,” she sang sweetly, “you are so naïve that it’s almost cute! Except that you’re a huge, un-cute dork, haha!!”

“Mabel, stop,” I cried out in annoyance. “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna hang up!”

“Fine, fine,” she giggled. “I just wanted to know if things went well. Did he like the game?”

“Yeah, he liked it a lot,” I said with a hum. “He picked up the rules really fast and he even created his own character without much help from me.” I then began to tell her all the gross, boring details that she ordinarily would have cringed over if we'd had this conversation in front of each other. For the first time ever, she actually let me indulge in my nerdy talk, even asking for clarification on terminology that she didn’t understand. It was refreshing, but I’m sure it was because she didn’t want to seem like a jerk for asking me about what in her mind was a date and then not getting any juicy details out of me. This was all to dowse her curiosity.

“So, are you guys going to get together and play again, or was this just a one-time deal?”

“We already decided to play monthly,” I said with a grin. I was really excited to be able to play my favorite game with someone I thought of as a good friend. “And I promised him that we could hang out and do non-nerdy things sometimes, too. We’re apparently seeing _Annie_ in a couple of weeks.”

“ _Annie_? You mean the musical _Annie_?” Mabel sounded surprised.

“Yeah, the musical _Annie_.”

“Do you even like musicals?” She sounded dubious of my decision to see a musical.

I hummed, “I like music, and I’ve watched a few musicals on TV. _Annie_ ’s the one about the orphan, right?”

“Dipper...”

I laughed lightly, “I’m joking. I know what _Annie_ ’s about. I know some of the songs, too. It’ll be fine.”

She made a weird noise that I couldn’t decipher. There was an emotion hidden in the sound, but I was unable to figure out what that emotion was. “You’ll make sure to dress up nice for it, right? You can’t go to a musical in jeans and a t-shirt.”

“I promise to look like a civilized person to watch the musical about singing orphans.”

There was a pause before she spoke again. “You realize that going to a musical with someone you like is a date thing, yeah?”

And she said it. I sighed, “That’s like saying all the times we went to movies together, just you and me, were dates.”

“I’m just saying it sounds an awful lot like you’re going on a date with your ex.” Her defensive tone was not helping. “I know that’s not what you think you’re doing, but that’s what it looks like to me.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. It had been weeks of her making wild implications and conjectures about my relationship with Wirt, and I’d frankly had enough of it. “How many times do I have to explain that Wirt and I are just friends? Just friends!” My irritation with her was now spilling out into words. I wasn’t yelling, but I wasn’t exactly calm. “We’re not dating. We’re not planning on dating. We haven’t thought about dating each other in years. We’re not an item. We don’t like each other that way. We’re friends, Mabel. Just. Friends.”

She snorted, “Keep lying to yourself, bro-bro.”

I wanted to scream. “Argh, just—forget it! Forget it! I’m hanging up. I knew it’d be a bad idea to mention it to you.” I could hear her flustered voice on the other end begging me not to hang up, but it was too late. I pushed the button to end the call and my phone screen slowly went black.

Mabel and I did a lot of date-like activities together just as brother and sister, yet now that I wanted to do similar things with Wirt, those same date-like activities were now actual dates. It was as though the vocabulary to describe hanging out with a close friend didn’t exist in Mabel’s brain. If any situation involved me and Wirt being alone together, then to her it was a date. It was frustrating and making me want to not call her ever again. Unfortunately, I knew that I would feel terrible if I didn’t call her every now and then. As much as she got on my nerves, I really did enjoy hearing her voice. I just wished that she would listen to me more instead of shoving me into whatever strange fantasies went on in her brain.

Feeling guilty about hanging up so suddenly, I sent her a text to apologize for being so terse. She sent back a string of emojis that seemed perplexing, but the large quantity of smiley faces meant that I was forgiven. At least, that’s what I assumed. She then followed up the emojis with a sentence reading “your a big dumb dumb but its okay” which I guessed was her way of forgiving me.

I heaved a sigh and returned to what I was doing before she called me: researching purgatory and other dimensions. The more I read up on NDEs, the more I suspected that the experience Wirt and Greg had when they were younger was something different. Though there were plenty of hallmarks in the tale Wirt had told me that made it seem like an NDE, there were details that were abnormal to the NDE experience which led me to believe it was perhaps an experience that only Dante Alighieri could comprehend completely.

I needed to ask Wirt for his brother’s phone number so I could get the other side of the story.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where my interests collide with Dipper's is when it comes to conspiracy theories. I love weird, wacky, and out-there conspiracy theories. I don't believe in most of them, but I enjoy reading up on them. I think the only time I've ever shown myself to be a tin-foil-hat conspiracy weirdo is when I talk about the kpop boy band EXO.
> 
> Oh, boy, do I have conspiracy theories about EXO. Not the real members, of course, but about their EXO personas. EXO's core concept is that each member is an extraterrestrial refugee with supernatural physic powers from a planet somewhere in the constellation Cygnus. They fled their world due to an entity known only as the Red Force that sought to take the heart of the goddess of their planet - The Tree of Life. EXO took the heart, breaking it in half, and hid the pieces on Earth in the hope of reviving their world after the Red Force consumed the energy of their two suns. After fleeing to Earth, they eventually caught the eye of a mysterious world government agency that seeks to capture EXO and use them for experiments, likely because of their powers, which are kept in items known as Power Orbs. This agency has killed 3 EXO members (the ones who left the group after filing a lawsuit with the company that EXO is signed under) and is now spending an inordinate amount of time trying figure out the source of their powers while holding them hostage in a mysterious labyrinth that manifests shared hallucinations. And now you're caught up on 6 years of EXO lore. Congrats. (At the time of writing this, this summary gets you through EXO's Tempo MV, since it was blatantly advertised for the Don't Mess Up My Tempo album that EXO is still trapped in the Overdose labyrinth.)
> 
> Anyway, because of all of that, it makes it pretty easy to deep dive into conspiracy theories for the group, since even the teasers from before their debut have hints and clues that are paid off in later MVs, so the fandom is filled with people doing the exact same thing that I do. I've actually done research into declassified US Air Force documents to prove a point. I patiently explained ancient Egyptian mythology to someone for two days straight because our conspiracy theories clashed. It's no wonder that I fit right into the Gravity Falls fandom after having to endure EXO's Pathcode era just months beforehand.
> 
> And now I'll take my tin foil hat off. Sorry about that. Please enjoy this next chapter of the fic!

It was a calm and peaceful evening. I was reading an old pulp science fiction novel while listening to classical music on the radio. It was a little past 8pm on a Tuesday night and sunlight was fading slowly from the early April sky as the streetlight in front of my house flickered on outside my window. Inside my home, warm lamplight flooded the great room while candles and a lone lantern flickered with yellow flame on the mantle of my small fireplace. I was reclining in my favorite chair, wrapped in my coziest blanket, with a cup of freshly brewed tea cooling slowly on the table next to me. The serenity seemed indecent for a weeknight, but I was savoring the bliss of the relaxed atmosphere entirely.

At least, I _had_ been until my phone rang.

My cellphone had been sitting on the table that my tea rested on, charging silently while I enjoyed my quiet evening at home. However, it now decided to come alive and wrest me from my bliss, demanding I pay attention to it. I glanced to see who was calling, assuming it was yet another robo call asking me to join in some ridiculous scam, only to be surprised at Dipper’s name lighting up the screen. I marked my book and set it on the table, exchanging it for the demanding phone.

“Hi, Dipper,” I said jovially. I hadn’t expected anyone to call me that evening, so this was a pleasant surprise despite how it was interrupting my quiet evening with my book.

“Hey, Wirt,” he replied apologetically. “I’ll make this quick, since I know this is a bit random.”

“It’s okay,” I said with a laugh. Lately we had been texting each other instead of going through the effort of calling. It had been nearly two weeks since our fantasy adventure in his basement, and it felt like we were finding a proper rhythm for our newly rekindled friendship. I was getting acclimated to the idea of only being friends with Dipper, and the fact that we were now bombarding each other with memes via text message instead of having overlong phone chats was helping to ground me in the reality of being “just friends” with him.

“I talked to Greg over the weekend,” he began without transition. He was being serious when he said he wanted this to be quick. I hummed in response as he continued, “He sent me demos of the songs he wants to use in the episode, and they’re all very nice. However, there’s one that I’m questioning if I should include in its entirety and I wanted to hear your thoughts on it.”

“Is it ‘Potatoes and Molasses’?”

“No,” he chuckled. “I actually like that one, but I don’t think I’ll include it in the episode. I’ll put it up for download, though. I think listeners will get a kick out of it!”

“Yeah, it’s a fun, silly song,” I mused. Greg was so cute back then, directing a music band of smartly dressed animals as he sang about potatoes covered in molasses. If I hadn’t been such a teenager at the time, I could have appreciated that innocent moment in his life more, back when things were as sweet as potatoes and molasses for him. “So what’s the one you’re questioning?”

“I don’t remember the title offhand,” he said, his voice growing distant as I heard typing and clicking in the background. “Ah, this one! Greg has it labeled as ‘Into the Unknown.’ What I’m questioning is the last line of the lyrics.”

I was trying to recall what song that was. We never really put names to the songs when we sang them – we just called them by whatever the song was about or who sang it originally. The Pottsfield song. Ms. Langtree’s song. The Beast’s song. Potatoes and molasses. None of them had formal names, and now I was curious as to what song that even was. “Which song is that?”

“It’s the one that starts ‘Led through the mist by the milk light of moon.’” He actually sang the words to me, which meant that he had been listening to the songs a lot. I didn’t even realize that he could sing until that moment.

I thought on that song with a smile, “That’s one of Jason Funderburker’s songs.”

“Who?”

“Greg’s pet frog. His name is Jason Funderburker.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Are you telling me that your brother has a pet frog that can sing?”

“Yes,” I replied casually.

“That, um,” he paused again. “That explains why the voice singing that song didn’t sound like Greg’s.”

“He can’t talk, as far as we know,” I explained to him, “but he has an excellent singing voice... when he’s in the mood to sing, that is.”

Dipper remained silent on his end of the line, processing what I had just said. “Okay... Okay, yes. Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. Okay.”

I frowned, “So what were the lyrics in that song that you were questioning?”

“O-oh! Yeah, that’s what...” he trailed off for a moment, the sound of mouse clicks returning for a moment. “I was looking at the lyrics and the end of the song is ‘the loveliest lies of all.’”

“Ah...” I said softly. “The lyrics are quite beautiful, but you probably think that if skeptics hear that line then they’ll think that the whole story is a lie, right?”

He let out a breath as though he had been holding it for a while, “Yes, exactly! I agree that the lyrics are really pretty – ‘Dancing in a swirl of golden memories,’” he sang again. I never knew his voice was so light when he sang. It wasn’t refined, of course, but his singing voice was very sweet. “I’m just afraid that people will take the lyrics literally instead of as whatever poetry they’re supposed to be.”

“They also wouldn’t believe that a frog sang that song,” I hummed.

“There’s that, too,” he laughed lightly. “I’ll make sure to credit Mr. Jason Funderburker and hopefully no one will think that he’s a frog. How old is that frog, anyway?”

“He’s going to be 15 this year,” I said. “He’s pretty old for a frog, and I doubt he’ll live past this year. I know Greg will be devastated when he dies. That frog experienced the Unknown with us, after all.”

“H-hold on,” Dipper said quickly. “You never told me that your pet frog was with you guys.”

“I thought I mentioned that he ate Lorna’s bell when I told that story...”

“You said that a frog ate it, but you never mentioned that it was your pet frog from this world and that it came back with you guys!”

“Oh,” I said, thinking back to when I told him the story recently. I guess I did forget to mention that detail. “Well, we did get the bell out of him later. I still have it.”

“You have the bell?!” Dipper’s voice had gotten much louder and higher as the conversation deviated from its original course. “Ohmigosh, Wirt... That changes so much!” He let out the most befuddling noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a scream. “Wirt, I have to see that bell. You have to show me that bell, Wirt.”

“Of course,” I replied. “I’ll bring it when we do the interview. You can take pictures of it.”

“Wirt,” he normally didn’t say my name this much, “do you know how unique and important that bell is? You realize that you went to another world – possibly another dimension – and you brought back _evidence_ that that place exists!”

I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I sat back in my chair, ruminating on what Dipper had said as I stared up at the ceiling. Lorna’s bell was a remnant of an important event in my youth, yet I squirreled it away like it was a relic from an experience that I didn’t want to remember or acknowledge. It wasn’t so long ago that I had pulled it from the box it resided in, ringing it a few times to remember that frightening adventure, only to place it back where it came from without any further question as to its significance in my life. After a long moment of silence, I finally spoke again, “I suppose it must be important, if you say it is.”

“I’ve actually been thinking that your trip in the Unknown wasn’t an NDE after all,” he said with the background noise of typing clacking across distance, sounding so odd against the soft classical music surrounding me. “I spent a lot of time researching NDEs since you retold that story to me, and while your experience has similar traits to an NDE – a guide, fantastical beings, the choice between life and death – there’s a lot that doesn’t line up well with usual near-death or shared-death experiences.”

“Shared-death experience?” I’d never heard of that one before.

“It’s the phenomenon of when a near-death experience is being shared to others outside of the person experiencing near-death,” he explained, though his words were fast. “I’ve read anecdotes of individuals, such as nurses or family members, who were in the room seeing the apparitions and experiences of a person dying despite how their lives weren’t in danger at all, and sometimes being able to interact with those visions just as the person experiencing near-death can. For a while, I thought that was what you and Greg had experienced, but now I don’t think it’s the case at all. I’m almost certain now that you both were spirited away to another world, either another dimension or some other place beyond the veil.”

“But wouldn’t going beyond the veil imply that we died?” He was talking so quickly that it was hard for me to keep up with his words. It seemed like this was all some kind of conspiracy theory that he cooked up on his own without my knowledge.

“The other side of the veil can be interpreted as the afterlife, yeah,” he began, “but it’s also where spirits and gods and other supernatural creatures supposedly come from. Like... fairies and demons and ghosts. The veil is simply a partition between our world and the world beyond human sight and comprehension.”

“I see,” I lied. I really didn’t understand what he was saying. Did he mean that every strange thing in the world came from somewhere else? He was going on and on without me prompting him and I felt powerless to stop him anytime soon.

“And due to Gravity Falls’ natural weirdness magnetism,” he continued, his words overlapping what few sounds my mouth could produce, “a lot of the stuff that’s beyond the veil ends up here, but not all. Because of that magnetism, it makes Gravity Falls more susceptible to oddities being drawn specifically to this location. However, there are also other places in the world where there are higher instances of the weird or the strange that can be measured as well, so there may be other locations throughout the world that have similar weirdness properties that pull creatures and beings from beyond the veil into our world and hold them in that place, like how Gravity Falls contained Bill Cipher before he was destroyed.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” I interjected when I could, hoping to interrupt his word salad. I actually had no clue what he was talking about, and it all sounded crazy!

“During Halloween time, or Samhain, the veil between our world and the next is at its thinnest,” he said, slowing his words. “In many cultures over many centuries across the world, it’s believed that interactions with spirits, both of human and inhuman origin, can be conducted more easily during that time of the year. You pierced that veil on Halloween night, crossing into some kind of purgatory where half-finished or half-remembered fairy tales seemed to dwell. Now that I know there’s physical evidence that such a place exists, I’m nearly positive that that’s likely what happened.”

“So... Greg and I weren’t dying?” I was so utterly confused by the cascade of sentences that had washed over me, and without visual confirmation from me, Dipper likely had no idea how completely lost I was.

“Oh, no, you guys probably would have died if you didn’t regain consciousness and gotten out of the water,” he said unhelpfully. “However, since you weren’t really in any true danger, it seems like you just slipped through the veil and into a sort of purgatory world.”

“It wasn’t a near-death experience,” I said quietly. This information wasn’t very reassuring. I had spent years comfortable in the knowledge that my brother and I had evaded death. When Dipper had mentioned a shared-death experience, my mind thought to perhaps me experiencing Greg’s near-death in the water, since I woke up first and much of the imagery we encountered in the Unknown seemed like something from Greg’s imagination and not my own, but the more Dipper spoke, the more it seemed like whatever we experienced was not what we had originally thought. Neither Greg nor I had gone through the trouble to research near-death experiences; we just assumed that was what it was. He and I nearly died that night and lived to tell an interesting tale that most thought of as an unbelievable story brought about by a suffocating brain. If what Dipper was saying was the truth, then what happened to us was more frightening than I imagined. “But our bodies were in the water. If we went to another world, then our bodies should have gone with us, right?”

Dipper hummed thoughtfully, “Not necessarily.” He didn’t elaborate, which was incredibly frustrating. “This isn’t really a true conclusion, though. It’s only my own personal theory. Whatever happened to you both that night will likely remain a mystery for the rest of your lives, but... you have evidence that it’s real. You have evidence beyond just memories, and that’s incredibly important.”

I let free a long and heavy sigh, peeling the blanket from my body as I lifted myself from the chair I had been resting in. I walked to the mantle and stared at a few of the flickering candles, flames dancing brightly against the melting wax below each tiny fire. My eyes then turned to look at the black lantern which sat at the center of the mantle as a dark reminder of what happened in my youth. “I had always assumed that the Beast was a manifestation of my own fear, despair, and hopelessness,” I said slowly, my voice low against the backdrop of classical music that the radio carried softly to my ears. Fittingly, an old recording of Franz Shubert’s “Der Erlkönig” sent forth its dark melody to circle around me from my radio’s speakers. “I wasn’t very confident back then, and I was plagued by constant anxiety and self-doubt. I’m still an anxious wreck of a person, but I thought that outsmarting the Beast was my mind showing me that I could overcome my own internal darkness. I thought he was a symbol and only a symbol. If you’re telling me that the Unknown is a real place, and not just an illusion my mind conjured while in the throes of death, then Greg and I somehow managed to walk away from a real, true demon in the woods without losing our lives. I really rescued Greg from being turned into an actual, literal tree. Everything was real and not a hallucination...”

Dipper’s end of the conversation had gone incredibly quiet. His typing and clicking had stopped. There was the faint squeak of his desk chair as he shifted his position and it was soon followed by a short inhalation of breath. “It doesn’t matter what’s real or imaginary,” he said softly, “as long as it’s what you believe to be true. You can continue to believe that the Beast is a proxy for your own insecurities, if that’s what makes you more comfortable, but from where I sit, you’re a hero. You didn’t kill the Beast, but you saved your brother and your frog and helped turn that bluebird back into a human. You did those acts on your own, and those acts gave you more confidence, even if it didn’t completely erase your anxiety.”

My eyes focused hard on that black lantern, the flame inside it burning hotly. It was old and scarred, the glass having black streaks from flames lapping at the edges. I had changed the glass before, but it looked like it needed replacing again. The paint was starting to chip as well, but it still looked handsome from a distance. I pressed my fingers against the glass and felt the heat until I could feel it threatening to burn my skin.

“Wirt?” I’d been quiet for too long. “Are you there?”

“Don’t say any of what you just said to Greg,” I responded quietly. My voice was barely above a whisper.

“What?”

“Please,” I whispered.

“You... y-you don’t need to take my theory as fact,” he mumbled. “It’s just... You’re okay, right?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. Why was I always lying to him?

A few fragments of words fell from his lips before he spoke a full sentence, “I-I’m excited to see _Annie_ with you on Thursday.” There was a hint of shyness in his tone. It was a clumsy change of subject.

“Me, too,” I said as I raised the volume of my voice. I tried to sound less sullen and distant. I looked away from the lantern, glancing to the streetlight outside the window where insects played in its milky glow.

“I’m not sure what I’ll wear,” he continued, his shyness changing to sheepishness, “but I promised Mabel that I’d look civilized. Would a tie be too much?”

I laughed lightly, trying my best to sound like I wasn’t still bothered, “If it makes you uncomfortable, then a tie might be too much.”

He made a satisfied noise, like he had won by making me laugh. “I’m sorry about taking up so much of your time tonight. I’ll see you Thursday, okay?”

“It’s fine, Dipper,” I lied again. “I’ll see you Thursday. Don’t worry so much about how to dress.”

“I’ll try not to,” he sighed. “A-anyway, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

The phone went silent and I pulled it away from my ear. The conversation, according to the ticking clock on a nearby accent table, had lasted a little over half an hour, but it felt like it had been an eternity. Dipper’s quick words and wild theory exhausted me. I stared bitterly at the lantern again, knowing that it wasn’t the lantern from the Unknown. It looked similar, which is why I had acquired it. Did I really stare down a demon, make a wild bluff to his face, then save my little brother from becoming a permanent fixture in a dark, otherworldly forest, or was Dipper just conjuring ideas from the labyrinth of his mind? I didn’t like thinking that the experience was entirely real. Though I perceived it as real when I was experiencing it, my adult mind always brushed it off as the visions of a brain attempting to keep itself alive in the dark waters of a freezing cold lake. I had spent so many years pretending that it wasn’t a real incident that at some point I must have started to believe that maybe it wasn’t fully real.

I settled myself back in my cozy chair and pulled my cozy blanket back over my body. I set the phone on the table again, letting it charge for the evening. My tea had gone cold while I talked with Dipper; I had forgotten that it was even there during the conversation. I sighed, looking out the window again. I had until Thursday to become at ease with the ideas that Dipper had placed in my head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in reading accounts of near-death experiences, you should visit NDERF's website. NDERF is the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation and they have an archive of thousands of NDEs that you can peruse at your leisure. They also allow for submissions, if you've had an NDE that you want to contribute to their massive archive.
> 
> Also, hmu if you've got an EXO conspiracy theory. I love talking about EXO-related conspiracy theories. Who do you think is the traitor?


	14. Chapter 14

The musical was great! It had been a long time since I’d gone to a theatre like that before. Movie theaters are way different from theatres for stage productions. It was ornate and old and classy and fit with Wirt’s aesthetic all too well. As promised, I dressed nicely for the occasion, wearing a dark, earth-tone sweater that Mabel had knitted for me a few years ago. It wasn’t a gift, she stressed at the time, but was something she said I needed “just in case.” It turned out that she was right. Underneath the sweater I wore a collared polo shirt, since I didn’t have anything like the tidy white button up shirts that Wirt always wore. For pants, I found a pair of nice black jeans in my chest of drawers that I rarely wore, so they weren’t stained or faded like everything else I owned. Figuring out what shoes to wear was the hardest because I tend to always wear tennis shoes, but I luckily had a pair of dress shoes hiding in one of the few boxes that I had yet to fully unpack. I’d gotten them for graduation and thankfully they still fit. I knew I couldn’t wear a hat to the show, so I did my best to make my hair look nice while covering up the birthmark on my forehead. The last thing to make me slightly fancier was spraying a tiny bit of the cologne that Wirt had gifted me for my housewarming. I wondered for a moment if he would also be wearing it, making us matching in smelling nice.

Honestly, I was more worried about his mood than anything else. Though he told me he was fine, I could tell that he wasn’t. I got carried away in explaining my own theory that I think I might have made him angry. I felt like a moron for not thinking about his feelings in the moment, going on and on about it without stopping to ask if he even wanted to hear my theory at all. I thought that because he was asking questions then he must have been just as excited and interested in it as I was, but his reaction in the end was so... I don’t even know what the word would be. Disappointed? Worried? Scared? It was some kind of complicated melding of those and other emotions, none of which I could properly label after I had hung up the phone. I felt like an insensitive jerk, but I was glad that he was still willing to let me tag along to the musical with him.

In fact, his mood seemed greatly improved when we finally got together. I had worried over nothing. It was like the joy of seeing a musical was making him forget that I had upset him a couple days before. We met outside of the theatre and he was, of course, dressed in his usual Sunday best. He looked so much nicer and cleaner than me without any effort at all, meanwhile I spent an entire week digging out all of my nicest clothes. He told me that I looked nice, but standing us side by side proved that he was dressed much more neatly. What made me happiest, though, was when we were finally seated before the curtain rose and he commented on the cologne I was wearing. It made me feel good, but there was something in his expression that made me think that perhaps he was still a little upset with me. There were no words or actions to back me up at the time, only a feeling in my stomach and lingering thoughts at the back of my mind.

Before the show and during the intermission, we chatted about everything except the phone call from Tuesday. There was no mention of the Unknown or NDEs or even his brother. We talked about the show, of course, but also about mundane things. Movies we were excited to see in the future. Books we were reading. Funny videos we had seen on the internet. Normal things. It felt nice being with someone and talking about subjects unrelated to work or the paranormal. Now that I was all by myself, most of my social interactions had become talking to my new coworkers or replying to comments and emails on the internet. There were the calls to Mabel every Friday, of course, but it felt like I was slowly forgetting how to have socialize with an ordinary person.

Wirt was perfect for keeping me grounded because he happened to be quite ordinary, but not in a bad way. I liked how ordinary and plain he was. He wasn’t flashy and he didn’t stand out. He had hobbies and passions, but none of them consumed him in the way that a lot of the things I enjoyed did. He wasn’t doing deep research into cyptids or searching for the latest information about supplemental material for a fantasy game. When he watched TV, he wasn’t the type to go online and tell everyone his speculative theories about how the plot would unfold. He just watched TV to have something to enjoy for an hour. When he read a good book, he didn’t seek out the fandom and read every fanfic to continue to live in the world of the book he just read. Instead, he would read a book, savor its ending, and then move on with his life. I somewhat envied that about him. If he had anything in his house dedicated to a nerdy franchise that he enjoyed, it was likely just one or two tasteful objects at the most and not a dragon’s hoard of every limited edition item from that franchise. Being around him gave me a sense of peace and calm, which was something I hadn’t felt much since living on my own. Even when we were playing DD&MD together I could feel his aura of calm around me. It was nice.

After the performance ended, we walked to a nearby café to sip hot drinks and gush about how good the musical was. We both agreed that the girl playing Annie was adorable, that the dog playing Sandy was cute in a goofy way, and that all the children who played the orphans were extremely talented. It was evident that we had a good time, even though the hour was getting late. I had a long drive back home and a full day of work in the morning, but I didn’t feel like rushing back home yet. Wirt’s aura of calm had claimed me and kept me from worrying too much about going home so quickly. After a while, we both sat quietly, gazing out the window of the café to the sidewalk and street outside.

“What adventure will you take me on next?” I asked this to break up the silence. It wasn’t that the silence was uncomfortable, but more that I was legitimately curious to know where we could go next to hang out.

“I haven’t thought about it yet,” he said into his tea. “There’s an exhibit at a museum nearby that I was thinking of going to near the end of the month. We could do that, but I was planning on going the weekend after our DD&MD game.”

A museum sounded nice, but the idea of seeing him two weekends in a row felt weird. “I don’t know. Won’t we get sick of seeing each other if we’re together every weekend?”

He laughed lightly, “You were the one who previously offered to play DD&MD every Saturday.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, I guess I did. Let’s see how we feel after our next game. If it seems like too much, then we won’t.”

“I don’t mind either way,” he said with a faint smile. A thought returned to the forefront of my mind – the thought that perhaps he wasn’t as over me as he claimed to be. It was his smile that brought the thought back from its grave, but I shoved it aside as best I could.

I shook my head a little, my fingers tapping lightly against the cup of coffee in my hands. “I thought you were mad at me...”

“I wasn’t mad at you,” he sighed. “I was frustrated and disappointed.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” He looked straight at me. There was a seriousness to his gaze and tone that caught me off guard.

I stammered in reaction, “M-maybe not?”

Those intense eyes continued to look deep into me. “I didn’t ask to have my experience explained to me like that. I know you didn’t mean to, but you should have realized that I was uneasy. Not everyone is seeking concrete answers or wild theories for their experiences, and you of all people should know that.” My eyes darted away, peering into my coffee cup, not wanting to stare into his anymore. “I know you were just excited to talk about your crazy theory, but I thought you were better at speaking with people who had intense personal experiences. I’ve listened to your interviews and they’re always so thoughtful and patient, but the other night you weren’t thoughtful or patient at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered into the dark liquid in my cup. “I don’t normally have such close relationships with the people I’m interviewing... I normally put on a façade for them, the people I interview. It’s almost like acting for me – like when I’m GMing. There’s also editing going on behind the scenes to make me seem more mature than I am. I mean, you know me. You know that’s not how I really am in person.”

“You’re still the same as you were when we were kids,” he said quietly. His stern tone had softened a little, but I could feel his eyes still boring deep into me. “I guess that’s fine, but please don’t do it again. I don’t want answers to the unknown. I just want to remember things how I want to remember them, regardless of whether they were a true near-death experience or if we fell into Alice’s Wonderland.”

“I understand,” I said again, and this time I really did understand.

He let out a large sigh, “Good. I’m still disappointed to learn that you haven’t matured as much as I had hoped, but I suppose that means that you’re more like the old Dipper I knew before than I originally thought.”

I laughed lightly, daring to glance up at him again, “Sorry to disappoint you like that. I’ll try harder next time.”

He frowned slightly, “All I ever ask from people is that they try their best.”

“Then I’ll try my best for you.”

He nodded a little before taking a sip of his tea. He seemed satisfied with my apology, his eyes no longer staring so darkly into my soul. I’d never seen him look at me like that before. My memories of him always featured him with a gentle, if not slightly morose, expression on his face. I remembered him being a worrier at times, as well as a bit anxious, but never frustrated or upset with me. Times had changed, it seemed. Or maybe I just wasn’t as good at remembering my own past as I thought I was. I didn’t document my time with Wirt like how I documented my research when we went on adventures in the woods. I still have all of those notes written in my young handwriting, but the only physical documentation I have of my relationship with Wirt back then, beyond that old cassette tape, were mainly in candid photographs that Mabel had taken without our permission. I still have those photos that she took on disposable cameras while sneaking around to catch us alone. Having to explain why those photos existed to our parents was a treat when they found them before I was ready to come out to them. I really wished that Mabel wasn’t so nosy about my private affairs. Still, nothing bad came of it. Our parents were way more open-minded about having a bisexual son than I feared they would be.

“We should probably head home,” Wirt said with a light yawn. “We both have to go to work tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “And I’ve got a long drive home, too.”

“I’m sorry about keeping you out so late,” he said, even though it wasn’t really that late for me. It was nearly 10pm, but it would be closer to midnight by the time I got home. I usually stayed up that late anyway, watching TV or playing video games or doing research on the internet.

“It’s fine, don’t worry,” I said with a smile. “But I did kind of wonder why you picked a Thursday night to do this...”

“The tickets were cheaper,” he shrugged.

“Oh. That makes sense. I’ll make sure to pay you back for my ticket, by the way.”

He shook his head fiercely. “This was my treat. You don’t have to repay me for anything at all. I’m just happy that you enjoyed yourself.”

That thought emerged from the depths of my mind again, nagging at me. Did he really still like me that way? “Then... I’ll see you soon for our next game. I’ve got a great idea for your next dungeon, so I hope you’re ready!”

“I’m definitely ready,” Wirt grinned widely. In that moment, he looked really handsome to me. I killed the thought quickly, annoyed that it was so loud. “I took some time to think a little more about Retar’s background, so hopefully he’ll seem more like a fully realized character.”

“Great!” I slowly rose from my seat at the table, a tiny amount of coffee remaining at the bottom of the white cup it had once filled. “Then... I guess I’ll head on out.” My feet were reluctant in moving away as Wirt got up and reached his right hand out for me. I shook his hand, feeling a bit silly that we were being so formal.

“See you, Dipper,” he said gently as our palms parted. I was still in awe at how soft his hands were compared to my own. “I’m really glad you joined me tonight. And that cologne really does suit you.”

I could feel myself flushing a little at that comment. I’m sure he was just saying that to be nice, but hearing it from his mouth again made me so happy. It was like an accomplishment to be complimented by him. And his expression was so gentle and sweet, a warm smile drawn neatly across his lips. The thought of how handsome he was screamed louder and more persistently at me now. I was already aware of how handsome he was, yet my mind wanted to repeat it endlessly to me with varying degrees of intensity.

“Thanks... u-um, goodnight. Have a safe drive home!” Awkwardly, I turned and rushed towards the door, exiting the café quickly. My cheeks were still warm. I hoped that my glasses had hid the blush that was spreading to my ears before I ran away.

...I ran away.

I’d been thinking that Wirt was the one trying to hide his old flame for me behind the mask of friendship, when perhaps it had been me doing it the whole time. Was I just projecting my own feelings onto him so I could pretend that I wasn’t still infatuated with him? I cursed under my breath as I walked briskly across the street towards the theatre parking lot where my truck was waiting for me. _No_ , I thought. _I’m not in denial. I’m not in love with Wirt anymore. I’m just weirdly nervous around him sometimes. I get weirdly nervous around a lot of people._ I was lying to myself and I knew it, yet I continued to talk myself out of my own feelings.

I got into my truck and sat behind the wheel for a long time, a nearby streetlamp beaming cold light into the windows of my darkened vehicle. My stomach was in an uncomfortable knot and my heart was pounding a little too quickly. I sat there in the nearly empty parking lot, staring at the dark theatre in front of me. I watched as Wirt went to his car, started the engine, and drove off towards his house. Even afterward, I sat there for several more minutes as I stewed in my own thoughts.

 _I’m not in love with him anymore_ , I thought again, though it was less forceful. It was getting harder for me to believe those words. I cursed aloud as I started my truck, the songs of BABBA bombarding my ears once the engine came alive.

“I’m still in love with him, aren’t I?” I quietly admitted before I set the truck into drive and headed back towards Gravity Falls, the revelation consuming my thoughts as I drove. I increased the volume of my music and hoped that it would drown out the thrum of my mind repeating the words “I love Wirt” over and over again.


	15. Chapter 15

Dipper finally set a date for the interview with me and Greg. Unfortunately, I had to rearrange an event on my calendar in order for it to work, as he had set the date for that Saturday. I had just seen him for our musical outing, and now I would be seeing him again so soon. Worse yet, due to the time difference between us and Greg, he had set our interview for 9am. I would have to wake up at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning to go to his house and do this interview that I already regretted agreeing to. For him to set this interview up so quickly made me feel like he was rushing it along. Maybe it had something to do with his episode release schedule or perhaps even Greg’s school schedule, though it didn’t seem like he was in such a rush before.

Frankly, I was glad to be getting it over with. It meant that I wouldn’t have to involve myself with his theories about our experience anymore and I could simply go back to being a casual podcast listener. I was still a little aggravated at how he turned so quickly into a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theory nut without any prompting from me. I knew that this was something he was passionate about, given how he had an entire podcast dedicated to such things, but for him to dig so deeply into trying to find answers to an experience he didn’t have was mind boggling to me.

His apology that Thursday night was weak, but I appreciated it nonetheless. However, the inciting conversation did harm to the once sparkling and dreamlike image I’d had of him up until that point. I had been in a fog, seeing Dipper as someone that he wasn’t in the swirling mist of my longing for him. I was blinded by my persistent infatuation, and that Tuesday evening call helped give way to more visibility into his true personality. Sitting with him in the theatre, I could feel that familiar knot in my stomach, but it was easier to ignore. I was still in love with Dipper, or at least the idea of Dipper that I had in my head, but now I was viewing glimpses of his true self that were piercing through my lovelorn haze. When we sat in that warm café and I listened to his pitiful apology, I wondered if my infatuation with him would continue to burn brightly as I learned more about who he was now instead of longing for a Dipper that was only in my sepia-hued memories. I accepted his apology because I didn’t want the subject to be brought up again, though deep in my heart I felt as though he didn’t really understand what I had told him. It made me incredibly uneasy about seeing him so early on Saturday. Like many people in this world, I’ve never been a huge fan of mornings, and I worried that my foul morning mood would leak into the interview.

That Saturday, I woke up at the crack of dawn, filled myself with a quick breakfast, and drove along the lonely highway to Gravity Falls. The lack of traffic so early in the morning made the drive quicker than usual, and I tried to wake myself up by listening to loud music on the radio. I wasn’t a huge fan of popular music, but it was very good at pumping up a mood quickly due to its catchy nature. My fingers tapped the steering wheel whenever a particularly catchy tune wormed its way into my ears. I wasn’t familiar with the songs, but they were something simple to indulge in while I tried to make myself as awake as possible for having to do so much talking that day.

As he had for our fantasy gaming adventure, Dipper met me at the door and warmly granted me entry to his home. I had brought Lorna’s bell with me, as I had promised, and Dipper excitedly set it on his desk with intent on taking pictures of it when we finished the interview. Words became scarce when we sat at his desk in the basement, a large microphone set up for both of us and fancy headphones covering our ears, as he tried to get his equipment and his computer working properly. He asked me to talk as he adjusted the microphone’s settings on his computer, so I talked about some pointless office gossip that I knew he wouldn’t be very interested in. When he was done with that, he called Greg via the computer and did the same with him. Greg happily regaled us with a tale about a magnificent duck that he had seen swimming upon a nearby pond that made me roll my eyes a little while it elicited a few chuckles from Dipper. Before he decided to start recording, we all chatted together about nothing in particular, mainly as a way to check for any lag in the connection with Greg and warm up our vocal cords a little.

When Dipper felt like everything was good, his voice became serious, just as it had when we had played DD&MD together. Like he had said at the café, he was falling into a persona that wasn’t the one I had been interacting with all these weeks. Greg and I did short introductions, not giving away too much of our real lives, before Dipper allowed us to tell our story. As Greg and I were so used to telling the tale, we played off each other easily. Greg let a few lyrics from songs slip from his lips, but Dipper assured us that he could edit that out later and insert the recordings of the songs when he and Greg managed to clean them up. Dipper interrupted us every now and then to ask for clarification on details, but he left the majority of his questions for after we had finished.

And his questions were definitely questions, unlike the free flow of thoughts and ideas that he had bombarded me with previously. They were measured, thoughtful questions. A few days ago, I had considered him to be insensitive and careless, but now he seemed like the Dipper that I had envisioned before that regrettable phone call on Tuesday night.

“Many who have had NDEs come out of the experience being more spiritually grounded,” he said calmly and deliberately. “Would you agree that this experience was something that made you more connected to the spiritual side of yourself?”

“I wouldn’t say I got more spiritual,” Greg replied slowly, “but it definitely made me appreciate life even more than I did before!”

“And you, Wirt?”

“I wouldn’t say that I’m more spiritual, either,” I said, “but it did have an impact on my life. It changed my perspective on aspects of myself and how I was living my life at the time, even though I was still very young.”

“Given that you personally didn’t like the experience, would you consider it traumatic?”

“In some ways, yes,” I admitted quietly. Despite how small my voice sounded to me, I could see the computer picking it up and recording it. “It was scary, facing down an evil spirit and a witch and a forest demon and all of that, but going through it all gave me more confidence after Greg and I returned.”

“So you wouldn’t call it a negative experience overall?”

“No,” I said simply.

“No way, José!” Greg tacked on to my simple reply.

Dipper looked at me strangely, like this was his first time learning that I didn’t entirely dislike my experience in the Unknown. It’s true that I didn’t really enjoy myself, unlike Greg, but I never thought of it as negative or bad. It was definitely traumatic and life-changing, but I didn’t ever perceive it as negative. It was something that gave me a little more confidence in my life. It didn’t turn my life around in an instant, but it helped me to realize that I wasn’t as much of a loser as I had originally thought. I hated myself and thought others hated me, too, which wasn’t the case at all. I was undervaluing myself and my own strengths, and coming out of that experience gave me the confidence I needed to move forward with my life.

“Like many NDEs, you encountered some of the classic tropes,” Dipper said, doing a few hand gestures despite not being on camera, “such as meeting with the dead, having a guide, being given the ultimate choice... At any point, did you think that you were dying?”

“Nope, not at all,” Greg hummed. “Now that I’m older, I’m pretty sure that meeting the Queen of the Clouds was like meeting God, but back then I just thought she was a pretty fairy lady that granted wishes.”

“When I was unconscious after slipping through the ice when looking for Greg after he had wandered off with the Beast,” I said slowly, “I had a dream about the events that led us there to the Unknown. It was like going under the water jarred free my memory of what had gotten us lost in the first place. Even then, I didn’t suspect we were dying. I thought maybe we had washed ashore somewhere and started walking aimlessly in the woods to find our way home. It seemed like a good explanation at the time. It wasn’t until later, after we were home again, when I realized that we had some kind of near-death experience. Greg was too young back then to understand what that meant, but I at least had some idea as to what a near-death experience was.”

“When did you start to understand your experience, Greg?”

“Uh... by the time I was going into high school. I sorta got what death was by then, mainly because the Goth kids were really into death.”

Dipper and I both chuckled a little at that before Dipper spoke again, “I know you guys didn’t mention this, but Wirt told me not too long ago that your pet frog was also along for the journey. How is he doing?”

“He’s old but he still ribbits funny!” Greg giggled and I joined him. That frog had the most unique croak I had ever heard in my life. He didn’t really ribbit, instead making a “rorop” sound.

“That’s good to hear! I’m glad he’s okay,” Dipper’s tone was gentle and warm. He’d never met Jason Funderburker, but it seemed that he liked the frog even without having to meet him.

Dipper continued asking very good questions that Greg and I gave honest answers to. If we didn’t know the answer or could only answer with an emotion, he didn’t try to lead us into a satisfying answer. It seemed like he really did listen to me when I told him that Greg and I weren’t looking for concrete answers to our experience, which made me feel a lot better about the little voice at the back of my mind that was whispering about how Dipper’s interviewer voice was hot. It really was kind of hot. I didn’t admit that aloud, of course, but I liked witnessing a serious yet sympathetic Dipper Pines.

“I want to talk about the Beast for a moment,” Dipper said in that smooth interviewer voice of his. “You said that the Woodsman described the Beast as the ‘death of hope’ and that those trees–”

“Edelwood trees,” I said, seeing that he was searching for the word.

“Edelwood trees grow by consuming people who lost all hope. Is that correct?”

I nodded, only to remember that this wasn’t a visual medium. Greg took the opportunity to answer with words: “Basically, yeah.”

“The thing is,” I said quickly, “I’m not sure that you really need to lose your hope in order to be eaten by one. They’re a bit more opportunistic than that. They consume people who are motionless for long periods of time, I think. When I was being covered in those branches after Greg had left me, it was because I’d been asleep under an edelwood tree. The same goes for Greg.”

“Yeah,” Greg said with more spunk than necessary for such an unsettling topic. “I don’t know how long I was up against that stump, but it was long enough for that ole stump to wrap itself right up around me! Like a hug!”

“A death hug,” I murmured.

“Oh, yeah, a death hug... that’s still a type of hug!”

Dipper made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a choke, “That would explain how such a tree could grow, if it thrives off easy prey that rests against it. Like a pitcher plant or a flytrap.”

“Yep, ‘cause I hadn’t lost my hope and it was still trying to hug me dead,” Greg laughed.

“A patient, predatory tree,” Dipper said with wonder. “I could see why a creature like the Beast would want to utilize something in nature like that, especially if it secretes a naturally occurring flammable tree sap perfect for oil lanterns.”

“He called it ‘his’ forest,” I mused, “which means those trees were also his. That’s kinda scary, when you think about it – a terrifying antlered demon whose territory is a vast woods with man-eating trees in it.”

“It’s details like the Beast and the edelwood trees that make your experience really unique,” Dipper spoke. “That’s why I wondered if your overall experience was negative, given how he’s such an antagonistic creature in what is otherwise a fairly benign experience.”

“I dunno,” Greg said, “Adelaide and that evil spirit in Lorna were pretty bad. I mean, Adelaide wanted to replace our brains with wool so we’d be her zombie slaves, and Lorna’s evil spirit was gonna eat us whole.”

“The Beast was definitely scary,” I continued from Greg’s point, “but by the time we really knew who he was, we had already met some pretty scary people. A forest demon seemed like a logical progression after skeleton people and a witch and an evil, blood-thirsty spirit monster. By the time we encountered the Beast, I was so tired from all the fairy tale logic we had to navigate that he didn’t seem like such a big fish. He was still scary, but besting him didn’t seem so difficult by then.”

“It does feel like you jumped through different fairy tales with each adventure,” Dipper said with a smirk.

I shrugged, which was yet another gesture that wouldn’t be picked up by audio.

“I always did like fairy tales,” Greg said brightly, “and living through them in the Unknown was really fun!”

“It wasn’t fun for me,” I grumbled, “but we survived to tell the tale.”

We talked for longer still after that, our conversation meandering now and then while Dipper tried his best to steer Greg on topic. All in all, the interview lasted nearly 3 hours. Dipper said that the magic of editing would cut the time down significantly, though it seemed like a monumental task considering how much was recorded. I didn’t really know if I was excited to hear the final product or not, but I was excited to hear more of Dipper’s serious interviewer voice. It wasn’t as grandiose as his game master voice, but it had a quality to it that made me yearn to hear it more often. I had heard it so many times with headphones on, but hearing it in person made me realize just how different it was from how he normally spoke to me. I quite liked it, and I was glad that I could return to liking it. He didn’t spout off his crazy theories, just as I had requested. My words really did make it from his ears and to his brain.

It took a while before we managed to get Greg off the call, as he wanted to talk about many topics at once, none of which were related to the interview. I told him that he could talk to me about everything tomorrow, and that was enough to make him cheerfully bid us farewell before exiting whatever program they had used to communicate over the internet. I sighed when it was over, grinning at Dipper, though he seemed to be engrossed in something on his computer screen.

“I’m going to head out for lunch,” I said merrily, my mood having improved over the course of the interview. “You’re welcome to join me. I’m planning on getting some fast food before heading home.”

Dipper’s brow furrowed and I realized that he wasn’t paying attention to me at all.

I frowned, “Dipper?” I poked his shoulder and he glanced up at me, the blue glow of the computer screen against the lenses of his glasses obscuring his eyes. “Do you wanna grab lunch with me?”

He sat upright, the glare from the screen leaving to reveal his eyes. He blinked, coming back down to reality as a small smile lit up his face, “U-uh, yeah!”

I returned his smile before I pulled away from his desk, stretching under the cold fluorescent lighting of the basement. “I’m glad that’s over...”

Dipper gave a slight chuckle as he followed my lead, stretching as he lifted himself from his desk chair. “It’s over for you, but I have a lot more work to do now that we’ve recorded everything. I asked Greg for cleaner music files, but he keeps flaking on me.”

We both walked up to the main floor of the house, wincing as natural light attacked our eyes as it streamed in through the large windows. “Just keep on him. You’ve noticed how easily distracted he is by anything and everything,” I laughed.

“I shall persist in my quest to obtain the music files,” he replied in his grandiose game master voice.

I laughed again, welcoming the change in mood. It felt like there had been a heavy darkness surrounding both of us at the start of the morning, but now there was light filling us and making the air so much clearer as the darkness lifted. I’m sure Greg’s lighthearted humor was a great aid in relaxing us, as it was shortly after we had started conversing with him that my mood began to lift. I missed having him around to lift my spirits.

Dipper locked his front door after we had both exited the house, which I thought was odd for a town that wasn’t particularly known for its high crime rate. The fact that he lived so far from any neighbors made me doubt that anyone would just wander onto his property without being incredibly lost. I let the thought of how odd that action was leave me quickly, chalking it up to habit after living in a much more populated city. We stepped into our respective vehicles after deciding on where to eat, and drove into Gravity Falls proper to obtain a well-deserved lunch.


	16. Chapter 16

Greasy’s Diner isn’t the finest of dining establishments in Gravity Falls, but it’s cheap, delicious food that every local in town appreciates. It’s situated along the main road leading into Gravity Falls, which makes it easily accessible for anyone either from town or just passing through. The diner’s housed in a building that’s shaped like a wooden log. Not a log cabin, but a log of recently chopped wood. That design choice makes it of interest to tourists and sets it apart from other restaurants nearby, while also highlighting the town’s main industrial asset: lumber. It’s hard to avoid the lumber industry in Gravity Falls, as it’s what the town was literally built with. Many lumberjacks lived and died on the land that Gravity Falls sits on, and this quaint small town diner stands as homage to them and the industry that made the town exist in the first place.

This wasn’t the first time Wirt and I had eaten together at this place, but it was the first time in a great many years that we had returned together to enjoy a bite. He was in awe at how it had scarcely changed from his youth – that the tables and floors and even the people seemed unchanged, if not slightly more aged. I laughed and nodded in response. Having family here afforded me the opportunity to visit frequently, so I was more aware of the subtle changes to the town – the more peripheral and less blatant changes that an out-of-towner like Wirt wouldn’t notice.

Wirt ordered a BLT sandwich and an iced tea, while I ordered a hamburger and fries with Pitt for my drink. A few townsfolk came to talk to us while we waited for our lunch, but for the most part we were left alone. My brain heaved a sigh of relief at having gone through 3 hours sitting intimately close to Wirt and not letting my Thursday evening revelation flash across my thoughts. I deserved a burger and fries for accomplishing that. As I had been saying to Mabel time and again, I wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship at the time. Just because I had acknowledged my interest in Wirt, it didn’t mean that I was going to partake in any urges or desires. I wasn’t going to ask him out. We were friends. Maybe in the future, when my circumstances had changed, I could possibly ask Wirt out for a proper date, but at that point in time, I had to make sure that any hint of me still liking him was dead in its tracks.

After our meals arrived, we chatted between mouthfuls of food. Wirt asked me a little about how podcasts worked, about how to edit them and upload them for the internet and things of the like. I wasn’t sure if he was really interested in the subject or was just filling the air with words to make it seem more comfortable, but I didn’t mind either way. He asked simple questions and I gave simple answers. It was comfortable company, sitting with him and chatting casually.

Or as comfortable as having a conversation with a person you just recently realized you were maybe, possibly, madly in love with could be. I was a bit surprised that I was acting so calm. Somehow, I was nailing my bluff check. Perhaps Wirt’s natural aura of calm was giving me advantage on my skill check.

A quiet moment came as we both focused more keenly on finishing our food and less on talking. I hadn’t eaten before the interview, so when the time came, I easily inhaled my meal. I tried to think of something to ask him, so it didn’t seem as one sided with how questions were going at our booth. Unfortunately, I’d expended the majority of my question asking for the interview we just did, though there were still some items unrelated to his remarkable NDE that I’d thought about asking before. Even though I knew some things about his life, I really didn’t know a lot. Granted, I was withholding a lot of information from him about myself at the time, but learning more about him felt like the best way to be a true friend to him instead of existing as some random person who came out of the blue after over a decade.

“So,” I said slowly as I pushed my empty plate towards the center of the table, “are you... dating anyone?”

_Why did I ask that question?!_

Wirt stared at me with his mouth agape, the last bite of his sandwich hovering outside of his mouth. His eyes were wide as he looked at me, stunned for a moment, before he returned to moving again. “Uh... not right now, no...”

“O-oh,” I stammered, laughing nervously. “I just thought, since you said your weekends are kind of busy, that maybe you do all that museum watching and play visiting with a partner...”

“Play watching and museum visiting,” he corrected me with a smirk. Maybe I didn’t roll my imaginary dice as well as I’d thought... “No, I do all of that alone. I haven’t dated anyone in a while. I tried using one of those dating apps after I settled in here, but nothing ever worked out. I even had a coworker set me up on a date and it was an absolute disaster!”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, even though I didn’t need to apologize. Maybe I was apologizing for bringing up the subject at all.

“It’s not your fault,” he chuckled. “Sometimes a date is just bad.” He paused for a moment, as though waiting for me to ask another question. I already felt terrible about asking the last one, so I didn’t want to try again. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Have you dated anyone recently?” He finally shoved the last of his sandwich into his mouth, chewing as he waited for my response.

“Uh... not really,” I replied sheepishly. “I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t had time. I’m not really looking to try my hand at it again for a little while.” Or longer. It really depended on a lot of outside factors going favorably.

“That makes sense,” he hummed after swallowing that last bite of sandwich. “Moving to a new place out of state is pretty stressful. It was a year before I felt comfortable enough to try dating here.” There was something to his expression that seemed bitter. He was looking elsewhere, not towards anywhere in the diner, but somewhere distant. I assumed at the time that it was probably the bad memory of a date gone wrong.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, though it felt like a lie. I wasn’t sure when things would be settled enough for me to try dating. I wasn’t sure if things would ever settle enough for me to try dating again.

One thing was certain, though: Wirt was available. Likely by the time I felt ready to start a relationship with anyone, he would be off the market. He always sold himself short. I had a feeling that those disastrous dates weren’t because they were actually bad, but more that he felt awkward and uncomfortable and was over-thinking every decision he made, just as he spent far too much time trying to look nice for me at my housewarming. It’s what made him so sweet and endearing to me, but I could see how that could be unintended sabotage for certain situations. I was the same way sometimes, and that over-thinking definitely destroyed some potential romantic relationships in the past for me.

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” he said gently. “Living here alone, I mean. You must miss your sister and family a lot.”

I sighed a little, “Yeah... I’ll still see them for holidays and stuff, but it’s not the same.”

“You have a lot of friends here, though,” he said with a small smile, “and I’m not too far away, either. I’m pretty sure that you’ll cope with things a lot easier than I did.” The smile’s light faded and he looked down at his empty plate, “When I moved here, I didn’t know anyone at all. It’s hard building up friendships when you’re an adult starting at zero. And you know I’m not the best at putting myself out there.” Even if I didn’t know that, it was pretty obvious that he was an introvert. He didn’t really seem like the type to gain friends left and right. Likely, what few friends he had until he moved out here were extremely close to him. “I mean, things are a lot better now. I don’t have a lot of friends, but I at least know more people than I did when I first moved to Oregon.”

“Are you still in contact with your friends back home?”

He shrugged, “We drifted apart after a while. It’s hard to keep up with them when they’re on the other side of the country. There’s only so much that the internet can do to help make friendships last.”

I knew for a fact that that was a lie. I had many good friends on the internet, and maintaining those friendships required the same amount of effort that my real life friendships did. It felt like he was making up excuses for why he lost touch with people who likely cared a great deal about him. “You haven’t tried texting them or emailing them at all?”

Again he shrugged, “Sometimes I do, but it always feels like I’m bothering them.”

Just as I thought before, he was sabotaging himself. He was over-thinking his interactions with other people, which was turning him into a recluse and losing him valuable friendships. I doubted that he even noticed he was doing that. “I’m sure they don’t mind at all, especially if they’re true friends.”

He stayed quiet, staring at the table as he nodded slightly. The waitress came, picked up our empty plates, and deposited our bills on the table. I grabbed up both slips of paper in a flash. The sight of my movement drew Wirt’s gaze back up to me as I looked at the dollar amounts owed. “Which one is mine?”

I grinned, “It doesn’t matter since I’m paying for both of us.”

“You don’t have to do that...”

“I’m going to repay you for the musical, whether you want me to or not,” I smirked as I pulled out my wallet, “and this is just part of that repayment.” I slipped a few bills from the wallet and placed them on the table. “Besides, I have to treat you after forcing you to come out here so early in the morning. I know it wasn’t ideal.”

Wirt shook his head, “It was fine, really.”

I laughed lightly, “It was Greg who wanted it to be today. He didn’t really say why, only that it was absolutely important that we did it today.”

A frown grew long across Wirt’s lips, “He’s hiding something from me, and I’m going to get it out of him tomorrow.”

It was my turn to shrug, “He’s technically an adult, Wirt. He can have his secrets.”

He waved a hand, dismissing the idea that his brother would have secrets. “Whatever it is, I know he won’t be able to keep it a secret for long. He’s the worst at keeping secrets.”

I laughed again as I rose from the booth we had been sitting at, stretching my back a little, “If he’s really that bad, then he’ll probably tell it to you whether you probe him for it or not.”

“He better,” he said in a mock threatening tone. He soon joined me in standing up, his frown having returned to a gentle, yet slightly morose, smile. “Thanks for lunch, by the way.”

I nodded and we walked out of the diner together, someone yelling “Thanks and come again” as we opened the door to exit. The air was refreshing and sweet, a nearby tree in full blossom sending its flowery scent our way. There was a nice breeze, too. It was a beautiful spring day that made the short walk to our vehicles pleasant. We had parked next to each other, which made it easy for us to say our goodbyes. Wirt offered his hand to me again, wanting me to shake it, but this time I didn’t take it. Instead, I clapped my hand on his shoulder and pulled him in for a quick hug. It caught him off guard, as I could hear his breath catching in his throat, but the action wasn’t long enough for him to reciprocate it.

He looked at me in confusion, like he’d never been hugged before, and I chuckled, “We’re friends, Wirt. A hug is way friendlier than a handshake!”

His lips curved into a lop-sided grin and he nodded his understanding. “I-I can do that, yeah. Hugs.”

I gave his shoulder a light punch, “You don’t need to be so stiff around me, okay?”

“Okay,” he replied, rubbing at his shoulder a little.

We stood there under that blossoming tree, tiny pink flower petals fluttering by on the breeze. I was the first one to move, heading towards the driver’s side door of my truck, a few little flower petals falling off it as I opened the door. “I’ll see you for our game in a couple of weeks! Have a safe drive back to the city!” I might have been trying too hard to sound relaxed, but I didn’t want him to know that hugging him had ignited a flurry of butterflies in my stomach.

Wirt waved a hand as he went into his own vehicle, pink petals twirling towards the ground after he shut his car door. I waited for him to leave, watching as he headed towards the highway. Once he was out of range, I pulled out of my parking spot and headed in the opposite direction. I had business to attend to at the Mystery Shack. With the interview out of the way, I could focus on other research, both for the podcast and for my own personal purposes. Hopefully, busying myself would make me forget about how hugging Wirt had made my pulse increase exponentially.


	17. Chapter 17

“He hugged me, just like that!” I stressed for the third time to Greg over the phone. It was our usual Sunday call, now that we had decided to make it a tradition like how Dipper and Mabel did, and I needed to talk to someone about what had happened after the interview.

“Friendship hugs really are the best kind of hugs, aren’t they?” Greg clearly didn’t understand why I was freaking out.

“He hugged me, Greg. He _hugged_ me. Like _that_.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” he hummed. “And I keep saying that friendship hugs are really great. Are you not used to friendship hugs? I thought friendship hugs were pretty normal.”

“Greg, you know I still have a massive crush on that man, right?”

“So?”

“A friendship hug means that he really, _really_ isn’t interested in me at all!” Thinking back on this moment, I may have been freaking out more than necessary.

“Well, yeah,” he said as I heard the crinkling of a bag in the background. “Isn’t that kind of your fault for pretending like you aren’t interested in him anymore?”

“I mean... yeah... I guess so...” Did he really need to be so blunt about it?

The sound of crunching and chewing was loud against my eardrum as he talked while eating, “You can’t freak out this badly when you did it to yourself. I bet if you told him how you feel about him, he’d probably be fine with it. He really likes you.”

“Yeah, but not the same way that I like him,” I mumbled, resting my head against the armrest of the sofa. I had been lying there pathetically for hours, listening to sad music and reading the most morose poetry I could find in my collection. I hadn’t even bothered to bathe or put clothes on. Instead, I was lounging around in my pajamas with a blanket slung haphazardly over my body, mourning the death of the potential for a romantic relationship with Dipper.

“No, I mean that he probably likes you the same way but he’s just afraid to tell you because he thinks you aren’t interested in him like that anymore,” Greg said while munching.

“How would you even know that?” I whined, my voice exaggerated in how somber its tone was.

“’Cause that’s what Mabel says.”

“Mabel?” My eyes went wide upon hearing that name. Greg having any contact with Dipper’s twin sister was news to me. Slowly, I adjusted myself into a sitting position, bunching up the blanket and shoving it aside. “How did you get her number?”

“I asked Dipper for it,” he said as though it should have been an obvious answer. “I said, ‘Hey, can I have your sister’s number?’ And he said, ‘Sure, she keeps asking me about you anyway.’ It was really easy to get it.”

“You’ve been talking to his sister without me knowing?”

“I thought Dipper woulda told ya,” he said as the sound of crinkling increased. “It’s not that big a deal, though.”

“It’s a big deal if you have some kind of information on Dipper that you’re hiding from me,” I huffed.

Truthfully, I didn’t know a lot about Dipper at the time. I remembered him from our youth, but his adult self was still an enigma. I knew that he had a job, but I didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it made him enough money to buy a big, fancy house with an excess of land. He didn’t talk about his family as much as he used to, beyond speaking of his sister. He rarely spoke of his great-uncles, despite how they had been so dear to him in his youth. I wondered if something had happened to them. They were pretty old back then, so maybe he was mourning them in his own way. It was hard to know when he never talked about his personal life. We talked about a lot of things, but never anything too important. Everything I knew about him was peripheral and meaningless, like what his new favorite movie was or what went into making a podcast. Meanwhile, I was willing to tell him a lot about my personal life, to the point that he probably knew all of the names of my coworkers and half of my family tree, yet I didn’t even know what field of work he was in. I knew that he had a Ph.D. in some kind of physics, since all of his certificates and awards were framed on the wall behind his desk in the basement and it was the only one that I could read well during the interview. I remembered him being an intelligent young teen, but for him to have a Ph.D. was incredible to me.

“I’m not hiding anything from you,” Greg whined.

“Oh, yeah? Then why did you want the interview to be yesterday?” Maybe I could finally get a decent answer from him as to why I needed to rearrange my life for him when he was clear on the other side of the Mississippi River.

“Uh...”

“Greg.”

“Uuuuhhhh...”

“ _Greg_.”

“B-because I’m quitting school... at the end of the semester...”

“What?!” It took my mind a long moment to process the words he’d said. I hadn’t heard anything from anyone about this being a possibility at all. Greg seemed to be doing pretty well in Ohio, as far as I could tell, even though I was well aware that he wasn’t doing stellar in his classes. “W-wait, that doesn’t explain anything...”

I could hear his mouth making strange noises on the other end. He had stopped eating whatever junk food he had been munching just moments ago. It was hard to know what he was thinking. Quitting school? If he was having a hard time at school, then why didn’t he tell me? “I didn’t want you to be mad at me...”

“Well, I’m not mad. I’m just... surprised,” I said with a sigh, trying to hide the fact that “surprise” didn’t truly encompass the emotion that I was feeling at the moment. “What happened?”

“I just don’t think... school’s right for me...”

I let out another sigh, this one heavier than the first. “Okay, but what are you going to do now?”

There was a moment filled with more of his odd, disquieting mouth noises as he tried to figure out how best to phrase what he was wanting to say. “I was thinking of moving out there... with you...”

I paused upon hearing that. He wanted to come _here_? Why on Earth would he want to come _here_?

“I thought, maybe if I’m closer to you, then things won’t be so bad and I can figure out what to do next...” He sounded so vulnerable in that moment, wanting his big brother to be a comfort to him while dealing with an incredible amount of change. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him for wanting that kind of comfort. He was alone in Ohio, with no family or friends. He was outgoing and a little childish, which I could see as both a blessing and a curse for a young man alone. Still, I wondered for a bit if he was making the right decision for himself. This wasn’t the kind of decision a person made lightly, so I could only assume that he had been thinking about it for a while now.

“My house isn’t really that big,” I said carefully, “but you can stay for a little while in the guestroom. It won’t be too much trouble.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

I let out a small laugh, “No, I’m not mad at you. I’m sure our parents are more upset than I am, but if this is what you want to do, then I won’t stop you. Just don’t be a freeloader. I’ll give you time to settle in and get a job, but once you get one, then you’ll pay rent until you get your own place, okay?”

He squeaked out a quiet confirmation, accepting my simple terms. “I... I-I wanted the interview to be yesterday because I was going to call Mom and Dad after it and tell them,” he said quietly, that same measure of vulnerability seeping into his tone. “I thought if I did something fun before I talked to them, it would make it easier.”

That explained why it was so difficult to get him off the phone yesterday. “Did it work?”

“Mm, kinda,” he mumbled.

“They’re not mad at you, are they?” It was hard to gauge what their reactions would have been. I had always thought that going to a traditional college wasn’t a good fit for Greg, and it always felt like he had enrolled just to make our parents happy rather than because he had a goal in mind for his future. Whether our parents were so understanding of this decision of his or not was beyond my ability to know.

“Not really,” he said weakly. “They were more... disappointed. They understood, kinda, but I think they were more upset about spending so much money to send me away to a nice school only for me to run away.”

“It’s not running away if it wasn’t the right fit for you,” I said gently. “You found out early that higher education isn’t for you, and that’s a pretty mature decision you made for yourself, if you ask me.”

He made a small sound before he spoke again, “You’re really not mad at me? I know I’ll be bothering you if I crash at your house like this, but I super- _duper_ promise to look for a job the moment I step foot on Oregon soil! A-and I’ll figure out what to do with my life while I’m there, too, hopefully. Maybe.” He was starting to sound a little more like his usual optimistic self again, even if it was strained.

“It’s fine, Greg,” I said reassuringly. “Who knows? Maybe your true passion will show itself while you’re here. The scenery here is quite inspiring. The majesty of distant mountains whose tops are almost always obscured by misty clouds is such a calming image for me after a long day and it makes me want to write endlessly about their abundant beauty!”

Greg giggled lightly, “If it works for a poet, then it’ll work for a dunce like me!”

“You’re not a dunce, Greg,” I said quickly. “You’re just... seeking purpose in life, like many people in this world. If all else fails, you could always try being internet famous like how Dipper is.”

“Yeah, the internet has lots of opportunities for dunces like me, hee-hee!”

I sighed but didn’t say anything this time. If he wanted to call himself a dunce, then I would let him use that term, even though I didn’t entirely agree with it. Maybe the change of scenery would help him to figure out what he wanted to do. A fresh start in a new location could afford him the opportunity he needed to shine. He had latent potential that I always thought was being stifled by his inability to stay focused. If he was here, under my watch, then I could at least be there to guide him in a direction so he wouldn’t be so distracted by other things.

“Maybe you could perform some of your original songs for the internet,” I suggested, hoping that this could spark a conversation about potential endeavors for him to pursue. “Or even tell some of your silly fairy tales. You always did like making up strange stories and songs, and I bet there are little kids out there who would adore them.”

“Hm, maybe!” I could hear the gears in his brain firing up. “Doing that for a podcast would be kinda boring, though.”

“There are plenty of original videos on the internet, too,” I said with a grin. I knew that he couldn’t see it, but it was more for my own benefit.

“Oh, yeah! You’re right!”

We talked like this for several minutes, brainstorming ideas that he could try to put in motion after arriving here. We would likely have to ask Dipper for permission to use his fancy microphones to help with whatever Greg finally decided on attempting, but it would be a small favor to help a young man try to find and achieve his dreams. As we talked, my mind wandered to the task of clearing out some junk from the guestroom. Due to a lack of guests ever using it, I tended to use it as a secondary storage area whenever I was too lazy to go through the effort of putting things up in the attic. Greg was rambling on about something else, deviating from the topic of his future, which made it easy for my mind to drift elsewhere. I listed off a few items that I knew would definitely need to be put in the attic, as well as devised a plan for rearranging the items that were already up there. My sight drifted to the boxes that I had recently brought down from the attic to jump-start my memories of the Unknown. I had shoved them against the wall, hiding them behind an accent table until I found a free moment to go through the motions of putting them properly away. I could see my red gnome hat and a bit of my old cape peeking out from the poorly closed lid when a thought made my face go white.

“The bell!” I gasped loudly.

Greg’s train of thought halted and he asked a very good question, “What bell?”

“Lorna’s bell! I left it at Dipper’s house yesterday!” I groaned. How could I have been so careless to forget a silver bell? It was right there on Dipper’s desk, too... right in front of me before I left!

“Oh,” Greg said calmly. “He’ll probably give it back to you when he sees you next.”

I sighed, “I’ll text him about it after we hang up and pick up the bell when we meet for our game.”

“Game?” He sounded confused.

“DD&MD? Didn’t I tell you we were playing that game together?”

Greg laughed boisterously, “Yeah!! That game! Maybe I’ll play with you guys when I get there so you have more people. I love using my imagination!”

“Sure,” I replied. “Dipper says the game’s more fun with more people, so I’m sure he’d be excited to have you join in.”

“Cool!” I could hear him grinning from the other end of the country. “Mom and Dad are gonna help me move out there, by the way, so I’m not sure when that’ll get figured out yet.”

“They’ll have to take off work for that, won’t they?” And I would likely have to as well.

“I don’t have a lot of stuff here,” he said thoughtfully, “so it won’t be as bad as when you moved and you took everything you ever owned with you.”

I hummed a little, “I’m pretty sure our parents would want you to take at least _some_ of your childhood stuff with you, unless you’re not intending for this to be a permanent move.”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “If it ends up being permanent, then I’ll ask them for all of that stuff later, but I can’t take a lot of stuff with me since your house is small. I won’t need a bed or a desk or a dresser or any big furniture.”

“That’s your decision to make,” I said as I finally decided to lift myself from my pitiful place on the sofa, making my way towards the kitchen to grab something to eat. “If you only want to take what you have in your dorm, then that’s fine with me. Almost all of your life there fits in that van of yours, right?” Greg’s vehicle of choice at that time was an old, beat up Chevy Astro that always looked on the brink of death despite how it somehow managed to run perfectly fine.

“Mostly, yeah,” he made another of those weird noises with his mouth. “Maybe I can do it myself, without Mom and Dad.”

“I’d really prefer you had a parent or someone else with you if you’re going to be driving all this way,” I said hastily. It was a long and difficult road trip, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get tired while driving and his wreckage to become top billing on the evening news. “If we can’t fit everything in the house, we can just rent a storage unit.”

“Okay,” he pouted.

“Good,” I said as I opened the fridge to seek out what my meal would be for that afternoon. “Keep me posted on when you get concrete moving dates, okay?”

“Yep!” His tone was brighter, but it felt like he was trying a bit too hard. “I’ll let you go now, though. You said you wanted to text Dipper about that bell, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not in a rush.” I pulled out some leftover spaghetti from Friday night, popping open the microwave door and placing the pasta inside to heat up. “I’ll make sure to ask him about letting you join our game, too.”

“All right!! I’ll talk to you soon, brother o’ mine!”

“Sure thing, brother o’ mine,” I laughed lightly. “Later, Greg.”

I heard him yelling “bye” into the phone as I pushed the button to end the call. That was... not the conversation I was expecting to have with him that day, and even thinking about it now, it’s a wonder that I managed to keep my cool while talking to him. Even though I supported his decision, deep down I was incredibly worried about his future. It would be so easy for him to fall into a rut of never finding the right job or calling, leaving him forever living in my spare bedroom and rendering him stunted as an adult. That was the last thing I wanted for him. I was lucky to have steady work in a career field that fully utilized my degree, even if the work was sometimes tedious and stiflingly boring. For Greg, life could easily turn out quite the opposite, like many of my high school and college classmates who were still struggling with finding good-paying jobs and stability in their lives. I hated thinking that Greg’s life could be so miserable in his future. I just needed to stay on him, making sure that he was being diligent in finding work that he was passionate about and that sparked his creativity. I didn’t want him to be like me, working a good-paying job that I only moderately enjoyed. He was a far more creative individual than myself and needed to have a platform to highlight that creativity effectively. I hoped that he was making the right decision by coming here and living with me.

I sat at my lonely kitchen table with my less-than-adequate meal of leftover spaghetti, toast, and a glass of water. Maybe I needed change as much as Greg did. I glanced at my phone, frowning at it as I shoved a forkful of unevenly heated pasta into my mouth. I hoped that everything would work out in the end.


	18. Chapter 18

As much as I had hoped that distractions would help to ease the increasing awareness of my feelings towards Wirt, the distractions did little to make the thoughts disappear completely. It was only a delay. Whenever I found myself in a quiet moment, all those thoughts came flooding to the forefront of my mind. I still felt weird about having hugged Wirt on the day of the interview. I’d told him it was just a friendly hug, but it opened the flood gates of my repressed feelings for him. I shouldn’t have done it. However, I didn’t regret it. That was the odd thing. I didn’t regret hugging him, as it was definitely the most benign hug in history.

Wirt had texted me the next day. The first thing he said was that he wanted me to take care of the mysterious silver bell he brought back from another universe, since he’d forgotten it on my desk. I didn’t get home from the Shack until the next morning and I hadn’t even gone into the basement since ending the interview, so I had no idea that the bell was still there at all. I promised him that it would be safe until our next game, considering it was of great interest to me anyway, and he followed up to tell me news of a more important nature: His little brother was quitting school to move out here to be with Wirt.

That was a bombshell.

I asked him if he wanted me to call him so he could talk to me about it, but he said that he was fine. I was beginning to learn that he was almost never fine when he said he was fine. I did as he asked, though. Likely he was still figuring out how to properly process that kind of news. Instead of calling him, I just replied that if he needed me to help out, then I was available. Wirt had already told me that he didn’t have many friends, so helping him felt like the least I could do.

After that, life slowed down a little. We saw each other for another game of DD&MD, where I gave him back his silver bell (after I had taken a ton of pictures of it for the episode notes, as well as ran a few minor tests on it for my own personal benefit) and sent him into a much more challenging dungeon than the previous one. He seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit, just as he had before, and we ended the session with him asking if it would be okay for his little brother to join us whenever he arrived in the state. There was no way that I’d turn away a potential player character, especially one as unpredictable as Greg, so I naturally said yes. We then decided not to go to the museum together, though a tiny voice in the back of my mind berated me for that decision. As much as I wanted to go on more “friend dates” with Wirt, it seemed like something that we needed to do sparingly despite how much I wanted to do it every weekend. Our once-a-month games needed to be enough until I felt more comfortable with whatever our relationship was budding into.

As for the interview I’d recorded with Wirt and Greg, it went up the week after our second DD&MD game and it was just as divisive as I thought it’d be. The only thing believers and skeptics alike seemed to be in agreement about was that the songs were great and that ‘Potatoes and Molasses’ was nearly everyone’s favorite. Due to the music files being freely available, parents told me that they had downloaded the songs individually and played them for their kids, turning a younger generation into fans of Wirt’s little brother. I doubted those songs would end up as big as something like Baby Shark, but it was nice that everyone seemed to have nothing but praise for the songs that accompanied the episode.

“I keep getting emails asking for his website,” I told Wirt over the phone one evening, “and I keep having to give them the sad news that he doesn’t have one.”

“I told him that he should have gone to school for music,” Wirt grumbled. “Have you told Greg yet?”

“Not yet,” I hummed. I was sitting at my desk, looking at the download numbers. The episode itself had fewer downloads than the songs, which meant that listeners were telling their friends to go and download the songs while only a handful of that new traffic were curious enough to actually try listening to the episode itself. Still, it was a nice boost from my usual numbers. I also noticed older episodes getting a little boost simply because of the effect of Greg’s songs existing on the website. Wirt’s little brother could have been making a mint if he knew how to market himself properly.

“Hopefully this will be the catalyst he needs to do like I’ve wanted him to do,” Wirt sighed.

“You said that you thought he’d do something with music,” I spoke as I rested my back against my desk chair, letting it squeak as it bounced my body a little. “If not music school, then maybe this: making music for the internet. There are a lot of people on the internet who do that. He could maybe build a persona for himself, like put on a costume or something, and do silly music videos for his silly songs.”

Wirt snorted, “He’d need to have enough motivation and focus to do something like that, though. Since he’ll be moving in with me soon, it means that I can be the one to keep on him. I did it when we were kids, so I guess I’ll just keep doing it until he’s mature enough to do it himself.”

I laughed lightly, “He sounds even worse than Mabel when it comes to focusing on important things.”

“I keep telling myself that it’s because he’s so young, but he’s really not that young anymore, is he?”

I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see it, “I don’t know. He seemed to make a fairly mature decision when he said that school wasn’t right for him, yeah?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop worrying about him.” I could hear him chewing at his lip in thought. There was nothing I could say to make him stop worrying about his sibling, which was something that I found incredibly endearing as well as relatable. It meant that he really cared about his brother.

“Well, at least he’ll be closer to you whenever he gets here,” I said as I closed out of a few tabs on my browser window to clean things up. It meant that maybe Wirt wouldn’t seem so lonely anymore. There was only so much that I could do to ease that deep loneliness I could sense from him.

“Yeah,” he replied. He was probably still trying to quantify how much having his brother living with him would impact his daily life. “Oh, but speaking of siblings, why didn’t you tell me that you gave Greg your sister’s number?”

I shrugged and replied plainly, “It didn’t seem important.” Honestly, I’d kind of forgotten that I’d done it at all. It was so unimportant that it had fled my memory almost completely.

“W-well, it was kind of a surprise to me,” he said. It was weird that he was acting so flustered over something so trivial.

“Mabel kept asking me about him, so it meant that she could finally stop asking me about him,” I said flatly. “I just hope she’s not filling his head with pointless gossip or her weird delusions.”

“Delusions?”

 _Oh, no_. I didn’t want to talk about that, so I needed to change the subject quickly. “H-hey, I was wondering when we could hang out again, since we decided to not hook up for that museum visit...”

I could hear him shifting, as though he knew that I was avoiding answering his question, but he let it slide as he replied, “I was actually thinking of letting you pick where we go next, if that’s all right with you.”

“But... I thought this was supposed to be a way for us to do normal stuff together,” I said quietly.

“Normal is an arbitrary term, and I want to do something that you want to do. Just name it and we’ll do it.”

“Then,” I said, my voice trailing off. I didn’t want to drag him all the way out to Gravity Falls, mainly because I figured it would be boring considering how small the place is, so I did a quick search for places in Bend and instantly found something I wanted to do. “Let’s go to Blockbuster.”

“What?” I’d caught him off guard.

“There is one Blockbuster left on Earth, and it’s in Bend. Take me to the last Blockbuster in the world.” I was being deadly serious.

He let out a nervous laugh, “If that’s what you want to do, then we can do that. But we can’t just go there and not rent anything...”

He was absolutely right, but an idea was sparking in my brain, “How about we go there, rent some videos, and have a movie marathon at your place? Is that okay?”

Again, nervous laughter dithered across the phone line, “I mean... yeah? My house is a bit of a disaster right now while I’m trying to get things ready for Greg, but...” There was a very long pause on his end, which was something I was starting to get used to. “Y-yes, we can do that.”

“Cool!” I could feel that flurry of butterflies returning to attack my stomach, increasing my pulse, but I did my best to sound calm. A movie marathon wasn’t something to get so excited about, and it wasn’t something particularly romantic. Besides, we'd already been alone together for many hours without me having to check my heart rate. I had a feeling that Wirt’s aura of calm would claim me again, just as it had on our most recent DD&MD adventure, so I didn’t need to worry so much about feeling nervous around him.

“Then... I guess we have a plan now,” he said, though he still sounded a bit nervous. “Do you have a day in mind for this movie marathon?”

I hummed as I pulled up my calendar on my computer, “Saturday is looking great for me right now, if that’s okay with you.”

“That works for me.” His response was a lot quicker than I expected.

“Awesome,” I said as I did some clicking and typing, “it’s in my calendar now, so it’s official!” This was honestly quite exciting for me. To finally bear witness to the mythical last Blockbuster in all of its majesty felt as much like an adventure as searching for El Dorado.

Wirt chuckled, “I guess this means I have to figure out where it is, doesn’t it?”

I laughed lightly, “It’ll be worth it, don’t worry! We’ll search for the worst sci-fi and horror B-movies they have!”

“That’s fine by me,” he said, his voice sounding much less nervous. Getting him to laugh always felt like a victory because it meant that he was loosening up. Even as young teens, I had remembered wanting him to feel free and relaxed around me, just like how I felt so relaxed around him. It worked more than I thought it would, but it was so much easier back then. Wirt had quirks I wasn’t familiar with now, phrases and expressions that I had to decipher – he was different from how he was in our youth, despite how much of him was still the same.

“Great!” I said with a grin. “Then I’ll see you Saturday for an adventure at the legendary site of the last Blockbuster!”

“Yep, see you then, Dipper!”

“Bye, Wirt!”

Hideous laughter was freed from my lips as I dropped my phone on top of my desk. We were going to _Blockbuster_! When I finished my fit of laughter, I picked up my phone and bragged to Mabel about this upcoming event. She texted back almost immediately “y u go w/out me???” followed by a string of sad and crying emojis. I cackled and sent her back all the triumphant and celebratory emojis I could find. At least she couldn’t call this a date. Going to a video store was the least romantic thing I could do with Wirt.

That was when I remembered what the rest of our day was going to be. I could picture it in my mind clearly. We’re on his couch, making fun of a particularly bad movie and laughing at our own jokes and commentary, when I glance at my phone to find that it’s well past midnight and it’s pitch black outside. Wirt yawns as the credits roll and I can’t go home – it’s far too late for me to go home. Wirt suggests I stay the night, and I’m flustered and coyly try to say no but I’m actually saying yes. It’s revealed that because Wirt is doing so much work in the guest bedroom that there’s only his bed or the couch that I can sleep on. I, of course, politely say that I’ll sleep on the couch, but Wirt insists that I take the bed and he sleeps on the couch. The scenario goes on until we are both in his bed, spooning innocently against each other...

Despite this being a figment of my imagination, I blushed brightly as it played in my mind. There was no way anything like that would happen, and I knew it. Still, there was no harm in indulging in my own little delusion.

If Mabel ever knew about this, I would never hear the end of it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like many my age, video rental stores were a big part of my childhood and teenage years. My state had Blockbuster, but my family was a little too poor for such a rich and fancy rental store, so we went to places that had flashy names like "Video Store" and "Video Rental." There was one in the small town we lived in back when my brother and I were in elementary school just called "Videos" and we frequented it every Friday after Dad picked us up from school. It was dingy and dark, with wood paneling going up two stories and walls littered with the strangest movies I'd ever encountered. We later moved to a rural town about an hour away from the city and had to drive to the nearest suburb to find a place to rent videos. Like I said, we were kind of poor, so renting videos and games was the only way that we could stay on top of the latest movies and video games so we wouldn't feel alienated for not watching X movie or playing Y game. It's amazing how having a time limit to complete a whole anime season of VHS tapes prepared me for the concept of binge watching on the internet. I loved the video rental store, and it saddens me a little that they've now become a relic of a bygone time. They just aren't that necessary in an era with easy access to the internet and cheap streaming sites.


	19. Chapter 19

It took only a quick internet search to figure out where the Blockbuster was. It wasn’t terribly far from my house, but it also wasn’t exactly convenient. My heart’s pining would have ceased completely from this incredibly odd choice for “hanging out” if we hadn’t also agreed to have a movie night at my home. That alone was enough to give me hope for the future, though I anticipated that it would be a shockingly sedate evening together. I had no thoughts to possible outcomes of our being so near each other. Even with the possibility of him staying the night, I knew it would just be Dipper sleeping in the spare bedroom while I slept in my normal bed, walls and a bathroom creating a great distance between our bodies so they could never touch intimately. I wondered if I should return to my pitiful state on the sofa, listening to the saddest of music while mumbling about my lost love, but I was stronger than that. We were friends – just friends – and I was going to adjust to this no matter how long it took.

Dipper and I met at the Blockbuster early in the afternoon on our designated Saturday. This meant that I would have to guide him to my place once we were finished, but it also meant that he would know how to find the store again on his own if he ever wanted to visit it in the future. And I had a feeling that he would want to come back to it at some point, given how enamored with it he was upon our entry. It was situated in an uninteresting strip mall where signage along the road indicated that, yes, there was a Blockbuster waiting for you to peruse its contents once you drove past the gas station blocking its visage from the street. It seemed exactly like any other video rental store, meaning that it was a time capsule of a bygone era despite its shelves being stocked with DVDs and Blu-rays of recent films and video games for modern consoles. If I was one to enjoy retro 90s kitsch, then this would have been an absolute haven for me. Likely, if Mabel had known we were browsing the shelves of such an archaic destination, she would have been inexorably jealous.

We each picked out two cheesy looking films that we knew would likely be a chore to sit through if we didn’t have our own commentary and witty banter to get us through them, rented them (with Dipper insisting that he be the one to pay the rental fee because he was still paying me back for the musical), and soon embarked on the 20 minute drive to my house. All in all, the whole trip to the video rental store didn’t take that long, which afforded us plenty of time to enjoy ourselves as we watched the movies we rented. Dipper had already warned me ahead of time that he was bringing overnight clothes just in case he needed to spend the night, so I didn’t have to worry too much about having to deal with that possibility. I had mostly finished preparing the guestroom for whenever Greg moved himself into town, which meant that clean sheets and tidy floors were already established for whoever decided to park their body into that room, though the closet was still in disarray. I had cleaned the rest of the house, too, making sure that everything was spotless for Dipper when he arrived, though I had a feeling he wouldn’t have cared if my house was tidy or unkempt. He's never been too interested in that sort of detail, but I certainly am.

The sun was still high in the azure sky as I guided Dipper into my home for the first time. My house wasn’t as big as his, but I still gave him a grand tour of the abode just as he had done for me at his housewarming. My home back then was a one-story ranch with a two-car attached garage settled on half an acre of land in a fairly new housing development. What few trees I had on my property were small and thin, and my yard was neatly manicured with shrubbery and various flowers snaking around the perimeter of the house. The inside, as I have lightly detailed before, was a mixture of old and new. The layout of the house was fairly modern, if not ordinary, but I outfitted it with vintage and retro ephemera to give it a lived-in and timeless look while still leaving room for modern amenities, such as a decently-sized flat-screen television and updated kitchen appliances. The walls and carpet were a warm, neutral color to accent everything nicely, as well as make the house easy to market whenever I decided to sell it. At that time, the only rooms I hadn’t turned into vintage kitsch were the bathroom and the guestroom, simply because I wanted them to be neutral places for those who weren’t fans of my eclectic decorating choices.

Dipper’s reaction to the place was: “This is _definitely_ your house.”

I laughed lightly as I finished up the short tour by placing the bag of rented DVDs on the coffee table, the bag rustling loudly as I pulled out each DVD case. “It’s unsurprising that I’d have a record player right next to the DVD player, right?”

Dipper shrugged and rested himself on the sofa, his shoes having already been taken off when we entered the house. He placed his socked feet on the coffee table, watching me set things up for our movie marathon. “I like it, though. You’ve clearly got a style and you’re owning it.”

“Thanks,” I said as I turned on the TV and changed it to the channel for DVDs. “Which movie do you want to watch first?”

The DVDs were already being inspected by Dipper’s keen eyes as they traveled between each nondescript DVD case. “I’m having a hard time picking between ‘Revenge of the 8-Foot Tall Ladybugs’ and ‘LaZer Robots from Planet Z’.” I had been the one to find the movie with laser robots and I was glad it piqued his interest.

“I’m honestly curious about how terrifying 8-foot tall ladybugs could be,” I hummed as I wandered over to join in the decision making process.

“Yeah, ladybugs are pretty harmless,” Dipper said with a laugh. “We should make some popcorn before we start watching anything, though, don’t you think?” He glanced up at me, grinning.

I nodded with a dull smile at my lips, “I’ll go ahead and get to that while you make your final choice on which of these ‘cinematic classics’ we should pop in first.”

Dipper nodded and returned his gaze to the two videos in his hands, making a comical serious face at them while I walked into the kitchen to make the popcorn. As the popcorn did its popping in the microwave, I grabbed two cans of soda for the both of us. I didn’t regularly drink soda, but it seemed appropriate for an occasion like this. You can’t watch a movie without popcorn and a soda, right? While the popcorn continued making its staccato music, I wandered back into the great room and set the two cans onto coasters on the coffee table. Dipper had moved to the DVD player and was inserting the movie about abnormally-sized ladybugs. It seemed we were both curious about how dangerous extra large ladybugs could be. Soon enough, the popcorn was finished and I placed it in a large plastic bowl for us to share.

“Is everything queued up now?” I asked as I walked back in from the kitchen, popcorn bowl in tow.

“Yep,” he confirmed cheerfully as he settled himself on the sofa. I joined him and he passed me the remote for the DVD player while I placed the popcorn bowl between us. “This promises to be the worst movie in the world, and I’m excited to watch it!”

“I hope it lives up to both of our expectations,” I laughed as I hit play on the movie.

As predicted, it was absolutely terrible. It was about, as you may have guessed, 8-foot tall sentient ladybugs that apparently had lived in an ancient civilization deep underground for millions of years and were now seeking to destroy mankind for disturbing their peace due to mining and oil drilling. This was a fairly modern movie, having been made in the 2000s, but the computer graphics used for the ladybugs were atrocious. The plot itself was spectacularly bad, as it centered on a group of incredibly inept scientists and military types who were trying to exterminate the ladybugs in order to stop their war with humanity. All of the acting was abysmal, to the point where there was a singular scene with a dog in it and the dog was the best actor out of everyone. Thankfully, all these factors made it easy for us to make fun of it, and we laughed so hard at some points in the movie that we had to pause to catch our breath.

As the credits rolled at the end of the movie, we found ourselves talking less about the movie and more about other things. The popcorn was gone, but the sun was still in the sky as the solstice had come and gone. The sun’s far off light hung in fiery colors above the tips of the distant mountains, cleanly washing the clouds in pinks and oranges as night crept close on her heels with its blues and purples. As I grew older, I found myself adoring this time of the day, as daylight slowly twinkled into darkness so the moon could send his cool night glow to the slumbering world below.

“I’ve noticed that you like looking out windows,” Dipper mused. He was watching me as my eyes had drifted out towards the sky.

“It’s the sky that I like,” I said, my vision still focused outside. “I like looking at the sky and the way it changes throughout the day. One would think that the sky would be immutable and unchanging as it hangs so high above us, but it ebbs and flows with colors and moods of its own. The stars are an unchanging backdrop behind the daylight sky, yet we can only see them at night because the sun is too bright in the day. The moon has phases, though he only shows us one side of his face. Even when clouds muddy our view, the sun is still there, gleefully hiding behind them as she waits to shine gloriously for us again when the clouds fade. I find it all beautiful.”

Dipper fell silent as I spoke and I moved my head to glance at him. I thought for sure that he would have followed my gaze, to look at what I was seeing, but instead he was focused on me. His expression was oddly tranquil, the hint of a smile tugging gently at the corners of his lips. I smiled at him nervously, and he returned my smile with a larger one. I had no idea what was going through his mind, but it seemed that he liked whatever poetic gibberish I was saying.

“S-so, um... let’s watch another movie?” I felt awkward asking that, but I was so nervous from how Dipper was looking at me. It reminded me of when we were teenagers. He used to look at me like that when we were together, and I always thought that it was so loving and gentle. There was no way that’s what that expression meant now, though.

“Why do you say things like that?” It was such an odd question and had no relation to what I had asked him at all.

“Uh... like what?”

“I noticed it in your poetry, too,” he said quietly, his gaze still targeted keenly on me. “Most cultures see the sun as male and the moon as female, yet you seem to feel the opposite. Why is that?”

I paused in reaching to grab the next movie, keeping my eyes away from him for a moment. I sighed and pulled my body back against the sofa, glancing at him, “There’s no real reason to it. It’s just what I feel. The sun nurtures life and warms the planet, like how a mother nurtures her children and keeps them warm and safe. The moon is cold but watches over those who wander at night, just as a father can be cold and distant while watching over and protecting his children. It’s just how I’ve thought about them as I’ve grown. There’s no hidden meaning beyond it.”

Dipper was silent again but this time I could watch his expression. It was hard to tell if that was a satisfying answer for him or if he was seeking out something more concrete. “There are a few cultures that have beliefs in a female sun deity and a male moon deity. Those cultures tend to have similar ideals as you do in describing the sun and the moon and their relationship with one another.”

“Really?” I honestly had no idea that personifying the sun and moon in that way was somehow unique. It was just a thing I started doing in my poetry when I focused less on putting my emotions onto the page and more about my connection to the natural world. It was a subtle and slow shift in how I wrote that had happened organically over the years.

“You said before that you didn’t think you were more spiritual, but I don’t think that’s entirely true,” Dipper spoke as his gaze moved to the window. The white glow of the streetlight was streaming down against the pavement of the street outside while behind it burned the last embers of the sun as she slowly dipped her body behind the far off mountains. “You formed a connection with the sky and the celestial bodies inhabiting it. The sun became your mother and the moon your father and the stars your siblings.”

I laughed lightly, “I don’t think it’s really anything like that.” I said that, but in my heart it felt like it might have been true. That rift I created with my family... Did I start thinking this way so that I could have something resembling the family I wanted by imposing those traits on objects beyond the barrier of Earth’s atmosphere? It sounded so silly, but it wasn’t so silly to be impossible.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Dipper chuckled, leaning forward to look at the movies we’d rented. “I’m probably just thinking about it too much, but I really did find it interesting when I listened to your poetry.”

“Thanks,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure why I was thanking him for that. “W-wait, that means you listened to the whole tape?”

He nodded lazily, picking out a movie titled ‘Sharktopus vs Gigasaurus X’ and opening the case, “I could tell your poetry improved. The tape you gave me when we were kids was mainly just love poems, while the new one is nice and calm, except for that last poem.”

I wanted to throw myself out of the very window we had just been looking out of. “I warned you about that last poem... It’s so cringe-y...”

“You lied when you said that you weren’t upset that I never called you back,” he said as he ejected the DVD we had just watched and placed the next one in.

“That’s not what that poem’s about,” I replied almost too defensively.

“Then what’s it actually about?” The music from the title screen hummed ominously under his words as he looked for an answer from me.

I frowned and my mouth moved wordlessly as I tried to find what I wanted to say. “I... I-I was mad at myself... for falling in love with you,” I answered quietly. “It’s true that I was heartbroken that you never called, but I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at myself. I thought that if I hadn’t loved you, then I wouldn’t have been hurt. I realized with time that that was stupid of me to believe, since loving you was the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Dipper stared at me for a long moment from his squatted position by the DVD player. Slowly, he rose and walked back to the sofa, moving the empty popcorn bowl out of the way so he could sit next to me. “Is that really true?”

“Yes,” I said, avoiding his gaze as I focused on the coffee table, fixating on a single scratch on the otherwise smooth wooden surface.

I could hear his body shift before I felt the pressure of it against me. His arms wrapped themselves around my shoulders and pulled me close to his chest, hugging me gently. This hug lasted longer than the last one he had given me, but it didn’t last too much longer. We sat there like that for maybe 5 seconds at the most before he pulled away. “You’re so sappy.”

I laughed lightly, training my gaze back up to him. The hug had felt so nice and warm, and the smile he was giving me radiated that same warmth. He really was like the sun. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He moved away from me, giving us space to breathe freely again. “Do you want me to get us more popcorn and drinks before we watch another terrible movie?”

“Uh, sure,” I replied, watching as he stood up to move towards the kitchen. “The popcorn box should still be on the counter. Just put a bag in the microwave for 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Drinks are on the door of the fridge.”

Dipper nodded, his delicate smile transforming into a grin as he did as he was told, refilling our popcorn bowl and redistributing soda cans. The monster movie proved to be of a better quality than the ladybug movie, though the plot was melodramatic garbage and the acting was just as bad. The space between us that had once been claimed by the popcorn bowl was now Dipper’s spot, our shoulders and arms brushing against each other as we passed the plastic bowl between us. Our evening stayed like that, the hour growing later and later as we watched our bargain bin movies. We eventually draped ourselves in my favorite blanket as we began to watch our third movie. We were having fun, sharing this time together as we did something that we both enjoyed. Being so close to him was comfortable and reminded me of why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place.


	20. Chapter 20

It was a little after 2am and Wirt had passed out halfway through the final movie. I let him sleep, placing the blanket we’d been sharing over his body to keep him warm. He looked so peaceful as he slept and I didn’t want to bother him just yet.

Our conversation before ‘Sharktopus vs. Gigasaurus X’ was still clanging against my skull, bothering me in a way that it shouldn’t have. _Loving me was the best thing that ever happened to him. That’s what he’d said_.

I watched his slumbering form as his chest rose and fell with each breath he took. I had hugged him earlier, but I’d really wanted to kiss him. I wanted to embrace him like I used to and kiss him like I used to, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Things were different now. Even as I watched him sleep, that urge to kiss him rose up again. I ignored it. Instead, I watched him for a long time, the world outside silent beyond the quiet hum of the nearby streetlamp.

Eventually I got up to take the DVD out of the DVD player, turning all the electronics off after I’d freed the disc and moved it back to its case. The noise didn’t stir Wirt, so it looked like I was going to have to wake him up myself. I touched a hand gently to his shoulder and whispered, “Wirt. Wirt, wake up.”

He twitched under my touch and slowly groaned alive, “What...?”

I smiled down at him, speaking quietly, “The movie’s over. It’s bedtime.”

He winced up at me as he slowly moved, looking perplexed. “I slept through the whole thing?”

I nodded, “Yeah, but it’s okay. You didn’t miss much.” I pulled away as he pushed the blanket from himself, blinking a few times as he looked around the room. “It’s almost 2:30, if you’re looking for the time.”

“Oh,” was all he said as he rose from the couch and dragged his body towards the hallway where the bedrooms were. He stopped midway and changed direction, opening a closet door and rummaging in it before returning with a neatly folded towel and a washcloth. “I forgot to give you these for the morning... except it’s morning now...”

I laughed lightly, taking the bundle of cloth from his hands, “It’s okay, Wirt. Just go to bed. I’ll clean up a little in here before I go to sleep.”

He mumbled something that sounded like “okay” as he shuffled his feet into his bedroom and closed the door, leaving me alone in his quiet house. I picked up the trash, looked around for where he kept his garbage can, cleaned out the popcorn bowl in the sink, and left it to dry on the counter. I had no idea where it was supposed to go, so I didn’t try to figure it out. I yawned and stretched before I turned off all the lights that I’d turned on, went to the bathroom, then flopped myself onto the bed in the guestroom. It was 3am and my body was screaming for me to go to sleep, but my mind was still racing. It was beginning to look like I needed to tell Wirt about my feelings for him. I was certain that he would laugh at how dumb I was, but it wasn’t fair for me to hide something like this from him.

Eventually, I turned the bed down and slept in it like a normal person. Everything smelled like him, like old books and clean linen. That comforting aroma guided me to sleep that night.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of movement in the kitchen. There was a second when I thought that the ghosts were up to something in there, but I quickly remembered that I wasn’t at my own house. I blinked awake, squinting at the unfamiliar room as fuzzy shapes manifested around me. My glasses sat neatly on the nightstand beside the bed. The sheets no longer had the comforting scent of Wirt attached to them. I seriously needed to take a shower.

I got up and emptied the backpack I’d brought with me of its contents, grabbing the clean clothes I’d packed away in it as well as a toothbrush and toothpaste and a comb. I forgot my razor, so I was going to have to live with the stubble on my face until I got home. I made a quick appearance to greet Wirt, who appeared to be making lunch for us, and promptly told him I was going to clean myself. From the short glance I’d taken, it looked like he was already clean and dressed and ready for the day. How was he always so put together like that? He waved at me and I grabbed the towel and washcloth he’d handed me in his somnolent state earlier that morning. I’d left them on the coffee table because I didn’t know what else to do with them. Soon enough, I had taken a brisk shower and finally gotten around to brushing my teeth. I realized I’d also forgotten my deodorant, but I doubted that I’d be staying around long enough to get too smelly again. Besides, Wirt’s soap and shampoo had a nice scent that was clinging well to my body. It’d be fine.

After dumping my dirty clothes into my backpack, it was finally time to investigate what Wirt was cooking in the kitchen. It smelled like pizza and garlic bread, but I needed to confirm that for myself. My stomach was growling loudly, so it honestly didn’t matter what the food was as long as it was food.

“Frozen pizza?” I asked as I walked into the kitchen. It had that distinct aroma of freezer burn and cardboard and grease.

“Yeah,” Wirt smiled as he cut it up with a pizza slicer. I guessed correctly when I assumed that if he had anything in his house from his favorite nerdy franchises, that it would be something tasteful. His pizza slicer was shaped like the U.S.S. Enterprise, with the saucer section being the slicer.

“Loving that pizza slicer,” I grinned as I parked myself at the kitchen table. He had already set places at the table, providing us with plates and napkins. A basket of warm garlic bread was nestled neatly in the center of the table, glistening with butter and looking incredibly delicious.

“Thanks,” he replied as he finished slicing up the pizza. “A friend got it for me before I moved out here. It’s a little awkward to hold, what with the engines,” he spoke as he walked over and set the small pizza down on the table, “but I really like using it. It makes the task of cutting up pizza more fun.” He paused and looked over the table setting, frowning, “I forgot drinks.”

“Water’s fine,” I said as I stared at the small pizza he’d set on his small kitchen table. The temptation was too much, so I went ahead and grabbed a slice before he came back. I caught a glimpse of the time on the ticking clock he kept on a squat table in the great room and it looked like it read 12:30pm. I somehow managed to get a full night’s sleep.

Wirt finally sat down after placing two glasses of water on the table for us, looking satisfied at the display on the table, even if a slice of pizza was already missing. “I hope it’s okay. It’s been in the freezer for a while...”

I shook my head, “It tastes like it, but I’m so hungry that it doesn’t matter.” I reached over and grabbed one of the pieces of garlic bread he’d made, taking a big bite of it and speaking with my mouth full, “The bread’s good, though!”

He laughed lightly and joined in with eating, pulling a slice of the freezer burned pizza into his hands. “That’s good to know, at least.”

Our meal together was otherwise silent as we munched our food and sipped our glasses of water. I noted the orientation of the table in the small kitchen. It was shoved against the wall where a large window with lacy curtains let in natural light to whoever sat in the two chairs perched at each end of it. One chair, the one I was sitting in, faced the entryway to the kitchen and looked out into the great room where it could easily view the far window that faced the west, looking out at the empty lot across the street and the lonely streetlamp just beyond his tiny yard. The chair Wirt was seated in faced the east, with an easy view through the sliding glass door which led to his backyard, the view only obscured by the low roofs of the neighboring houses behind his lot. It was as though he had unintentionally built his life around being able to see the sky easily no matter what he was doing. Even in the bathroom, which had no windows and was barren in decorations, there was a single framed picture of the sky hanging above the towel rack in front of the toilet.

It was so strange how enamored he was with the sky. It was one of the many things that was different from what I remembered. The Star Trek pizza slicer was unsurprising, since that was in his wheelhouse even in the twilight of our teens, but this strange evolution of enjoying views of the sky was odd. Although, the more I thought about it, there had been clues beyond just the tape of poetry and his occasional bouts of looking out windows. During the interview, he mentioned the moon and the sky several times, stressing the point that the phase of the moon never changed while they were in the Unknown and that the stars had seemed strange to him, that the sun seemed weaker there and that the sky wasn’t entirely the right color. My fondest memory of him when we were younger was of us looking out at the sky, watching the sunset, all because he’d said to me that he wanted to see the sunset from up high like that. The clues had been there, even when we sat together in my room at the housewarming and he kept gazing out the window to somewhere far away. I was apparently too dense to notice it at all.

“I’m sorry about passing out last night,” Wirt said after he finished eating. We had been quiet for a long time, Wirt’s gaze having fixated on the outdoors again. I didn’t mind the silence as I followed his vision out the window that the table was shoved up against. The view outside was mainly his wooden privacy fence and a few shrubs and his neighbor’s roof, but his eyes were viewing higher than that. I had a feeling that the white lace curtains on the window were almost always pulled back to allow for maximum sky watching while in the kitchen.

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” I smiled before gulping down the remainder of my water. “If you’re tired, you’re tired. That movie was pretty boring anyway, so you didn’t miss much.”

“I haven’t stayed up that late in a long time,” he confessed with a laugh. “I’m usually in bed by 10.”

“It’s fine, Wirt,” I reassured him. “You looked like you were enjoying a nice dream.”

“You didn’t take any embarrassing pictures of me, did you?”

I laughed at that, “No way! I made sure you were bundled up with your blanket so you were nice and warm. I’m not the kind of guy who would take candid pics of someone like that.” The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Instead, I had even creepier thoughts while he was sleeping that I already felt incredibly ashamed of.

“Your sister would have,” he said as he rose from his seat, clearing away some of the dishes. “She used to take all kinds of pictures of us without our permission.”

“I still have some of those photos,” I said as I got up to help, picking up what he had left on the table. “We were cute back then, if not a little awkward.”

“You mean a _lot_ awkward,” Wirt chuckled, taking the dishes from my hands and running them under the faucet before placing them in the dishwasher. “We were both the most awkward teens in the world. If I’d had my clarinet with me during that vacation, I probably would have recorded some of my original compositions for you on top of the embarrassing poetry.”

That made me curious. I knew he played the clarinet, but I didn’t know that he had actually written music. “You write your own music?”

“Used to, yeah,” he said as he placed the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, shutting it closed before he washed his hands. “None of it was very good, though. If I had gone to school for music, then I probably would have gotten better at it. Instead, I stopped playing music altogether. It wasn’t until after I settled in here that I tried my hand at relearning the clarinet.”

“That sucks.” I sounded so dumb, but I didn’t know what else to say. I already had no clue that he was skilled enough at music to write it. “At least you picked it back up again, right?”

“Yeah,” he said as he dried his hands with a kitchen towel, “but I feel like I missed out on valuable knowledge I could have gained if I’d gone to music school.” I could hear it in his voice. He regretted not pursuing music. Was that why he kept wishing that Greg had gone to music school?

“If you’d gone that route, though,” I said slowly, leaning against the counter beside him, “then you wouldn’t be so close to me, right? You’re here in Oregon because of the job you have now, right? That’s what you said before. I mean, I still would've gotten in contact with you again, but you’d probably be somewhere glamorous, playing music for a symphony in Sweden or something. We wouldn’t have been able to have a lazy movie night together.”

He laughed lightly, “I suppose. I did enjoy myself last night, even if I fell asleep.”

I grinned widely at him and he looked at me with a small, lop-sided smile. The glow of sunlight streaming in from the window made it look like he had a halo of light around him. Or maybe it was just smudged pizza grease on my glasses lens. “I...”

He looked at me curiously, now that I’d made a sound but didn’t follow through with any words. “You probably need to be going home soon, right?”

“Uh, yeah...” I said sheepishly, pulling my body from the counter and walking away slowly. That wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell him what I thought about last night, confess to him that I was still in love with him even though he wasn’t in love with me. But I was afraid. I didn’t have a reason to be afraid, but I was and there was no changing that fact.

Wirt busied himself by using the kitchen towel to dry the counter, which had gotten a little wet when he was doing a quick cleaning of the dishes. He seemed oblivious to the fact that I was conflicted over my own desire to tell him the truth. I’d been hiding a lot from him, but this was the one that was weighing on me the most.

I made it to the point where the off-white linoleum switched to beige carpet when I paused. I had to tell him. If I didn’t do it now, then I probably never would. I turned and opened my mouth, “We need to talk before I go, if that’s okay.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and stayed like that for longer than I thought he should. My eyes trailed down to find that his hand, still holding the towel, was shaking. I couldn’t imagine why he was trembling like that, other than perhaps his anxiety was flaring up at my serious tone. He gave a slight nod and I sat down at the kitchen table, taking up the seat I had previously occupied, and kept my eyes focused on Wirt. Eventually, he made his way to join me, looking like a wounded animal. I had no idea what he thought I was going to say to him, but whatever scenarios were running through his head had him looking more terrified than I felt.

I sucked in a deep breath, calming myself as I rested my palms against the dark wood of the table. “I, um...” I started nervously, “there’s something I–”

“I-I knew this day would come,” he said in a low, shivering voice. He was staring down at his trembling hands that were neatly folded atop the table. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

My thought process halted. I was both curious and terrified of whatever Wirt thought I had figured out. I opened my mouth to say no, but his words began again.

“I tried to keep it hidden,” he said, biting his bottom lip briefly. “I’m sorry. I-I know you probably think it’s stupid. I’m an adult, r-right? I thought, maybe... maybe, with time, things would change, but... I guess I was lying to myself.”

“It’s okay, Wirt,” I said, hoping that he would eventually say what he thought I figured out. It was beginning to look like he wasn’t, though.

“N-no, it’s not okay,” he cried out, the sound startling not just me but also himself. His body stiffened for a second before he hunched over, his gaze still trained on his trembling hands. “I lied to you, too. I told you everything was okay, that everything was fine, when it wasn’t, and...” He let out a quick sigh, “I’ve been lying this whole time, I think. I just wanted things to go well, but... you figured it out.” He swallowed hard, “I’m so sorry...”

I stared at him, perplexed. I remained quiet for a lot longer than I intended to, staring at his hunched and trembling form, only to release a small laugh. “Wirt, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He inhaled a sharp breath before he lifted his head, his face beet red and his eyes large. “You... y-you don’t know?”

I shook my head, “I really don’t know. Whatever you’re thinking I figured out, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”

Wirt slapped his cheeks, letting a short curse be uttered under his breath. “I’m an idiot...”

I laughed again, “Well, now I’m curious. What is it that I figured out?”

He hid his face behind his hands, his body still shaking. “No, I can’t say it. It’s stupid.”

I folded my arms over my chest, sighing, “How about I tell you what I was going to say, then you tell me what you were going to say? Does that seem like a fair deal?”

There was a delay between my question being asked and his response to it. He weakly pulled his hands away from his face and nodded. His eyes were back to avoiding mine, staring down at the table as he slowly dropped his hands down to rest upon it again, knitting his fingers together despite how they quivered. This explained why he seemed so spooked when I said that we needed to talk. He was keeping something from me, and it was something that he was scared of revealing to me.

However, the terms of the deal were quite explicit. If I wanted to know his secret, then I needed to reveal my own. I inhaled a long, deep breath and started again, “I just wanted to...” I shook my head. My stomach was beginning to tie itself into a tangled mess and I felt my heart starting to gallop within my chest. I needed to figure out how to word this properly as well as maintain my composure. I hoped Wirt’s aura of calm would surround me long enough to tell him what I needed to tell him. “You know I like you, right?” My voice sounded strange to my ears, as though it had become weaker.

He nodded slightly, though his eyes were still directed downward. It was hard to gauge his expression from that angle, his dusty brown hair sweeping down just enough to hide everything but his nose from my view. He was still shaking, fearful of whatever he expected me to say to him and of his eventual need to tell me his own dark secret. It hurt me so much to see him like that. I thought I was the one who was scared, but Wirt was clearly more terrified than I could ever dream. Whatever was going on in his head, it made me want to shove my hand into his brain and forcibly pull those thoughts out of there to bring him peace again.

Cautiously, I leaned forward and reached a hand across the small table, lightly touching his trembling hands. Like earlier when I’d woke him up, he twitched under my touch, but he didn’t shy away. Instinctively, my other hand moved across the table and I picked up both of his hands in mine, cradling them gently to sooth his worry and fear. To my surprise, he let me do it. We stayed like that for a minute or so, quiet as I tried to ease his anxiety. Slowly, the trembling stopped as my thumbs rubbed lightly against the skin of his knuckles. They had turned white from how tense he was, but now they were regaining their normal coloration. Wirt’s breathing had also returned to its normal pace, and I realized that I had also calmed down. My heart no longer galloped in my chest and my internal organs felt relaxed again. “Wirt,” I whispered as I stared at his delicate hands, “I love you.”

His hands tensed again under my touch and I loosened by grip, thinking that reaction indicated his dissatisfaction with my words. He mumbled something under his breath so faintly that I didn’t catch it. His head shook, his hair swishing from side to side before his face lifted upward. I couldn’t read his expression well, but there was the slightest hint of a smile curling the ends of his lips. His voice was small as he repeated his words slightly louder for me: “I love you, too, Mason.”

That name hit deftly against my heart. I’d forgotten that I’d told him my real name. I thought as I got older that I was going to use my real name more often than my nickname, but that never was the case. On official documents and bills and things like that, my name was Mason, but to my friends and colleagues and even listeners to my podcast, I was Dipper. Only family and close friends called me Mason, and even then it was very rarely. To hear that name directed at me from Wirt’s mouth felt odd, but not in a bad way. I liked how my name sounded coming from his voice. It was comforting.

A small smile grew broad against my cheeks, and Wirt’s smile grew as well. We both laughed awkwardly, looking away from each other like teenagers finding love for the first time, embarrassed at our own admission. Wirt’s hands moved from under mine, making it so that our fingers knitted cleanly together atop the small kitchen table, our palms lightly touching. I thought for sure that my heart would race again and my guts would strain once more, but neither happened. In that moment, time felt infinite and quiet, like the soundless landscape of outer space. We both chuckled lightly, looking at our hands. In that infinite calm, I forgot all my personal troubles and woes. They seemed insignificant. His soft palms and delicate fingers were so much more important to me in that gentle exchange of warmth.

“You did figure it out,” he whispered at our hands. I lifted my gaze to find gentle brown eyes watching me, that lop-sided smile I adored curving up serenely.

I laughed lightly, “I didn’t figure it out – we just had the same idea at the same time.”

He smiled at me for a long moment before it faded a little and his hands reluctantly pulled away. “What do we do now...?”

That was a very good question and I didn’t have an immediate answer for it. Now that the moment was broken, time returned to its steady march and all my personal troubles and woes came back to me, weighing on my mind again. “I don’t know.”

He heaved a sigh as he rested his back against the chair, “You said that you weren’t looking to date anyone right now...”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a bubbling annoyance at my own selfish problems, “but I still want to be with you.” I needed to figure something out. Would dating Wirt really interfere with my life? It seemed silly to think that it would, but there were still so many variables at play that could jeopardize the work I was doing. Being tied to another human like this could complicate matters for me, yet I wanted desperately to be with Wirt. It’s why I was so vehemently against the idea of rekindling our romance and tried so hard to ignore my own feelings towards him.

“Why don’t...” he spoke softly, “Why don’t we just see what happens? No formal dating, just... continuing to hang out like we’ve been doing.”

“Is that even possible now?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest again.

“I don’t consider playing DD&MD date material,” he hummed. “A-and what we did last night wasn’t really a date, either.”

“The musical kind of was,” I said slowly, “but given the circumstances we saw it under, it wasn’t a date.”

“Exactly,” he nodded. “I think it’s possible. We can acknowledge our feelings without having them overwhelm us, right? We both were living like that up until this point, so... it’ll be like normal, except now we can be open with our emotions instead of hiding them.”

He made a valid point, but it still felt like walking on glass. I nodded in agreement anyway, “Okay, we can just... keep doing what we’ve been doing, at least until I feel like I’m ready to make whatever this is official.”

Wirt smiled in satisfaction at this decision, his gaze moving back out the window, looking at the sky that he loved so much. I wondered if I would ever understand why it brought him so much joy to gaze up at it like that. I wasn’t jealous of it, but curious of what mystery it held for him.

A few moments passed and I pushed myself away from the table, lifting myself up to stand. “I should probably go home now. I’m sorry about... this.” I waved my hand, gesturing at the table. I was trying to encompass everything that just happened, but all I could do was wave weakly at a piece of furniture.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said behind a tiny smile as his attention returned to me. “I’ve spent a long time agonizing over my feelings for you, thinking that you would hate me if I ever admitted them to you. I’m glad that I can finally be honest with you. You shouldn’t feel sorry about being in love. Neither of us should be.”

I didn’t know what else to do or to say as I walked by him other than nod, heading towards the spare bedroom to grab my stuff. I spent a few minutes making sure that I had everything before I quickly made the bed. It wasn’t as neat as I had found it, but I hoped Wirt would appreciate the effort I made. I moved to find my shoes, which I had left by the front door, and sat down on the couch to tie them with my backpack slung over one shoulder.

“I’ll take the movies back later,” Wirt said as I finished tying my shoes, walking in from the kitchen to see me off. “We’re still having our game next week, right?”

I nodded as I lifted myself from the couch “Yeah, we’re still having the game. And, uh... lemme know when your brother’s supposed to move in. I can come and help out, if you need it.”

“Our parents are coming, so we shouldn’t need any help, but... I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do.” He smiled at me, his expression gentle and pure.

“Then, uh... I guess I’ll go?” I spoke as I slowly made my way towards the door.

Wirt nodded, “Have a safe trip home. I’ll see you next week.”

“See ya, Wirt,” I said before nervously tacking on, “and... um... I love you?”

He laughed politely, waving a hand at me, “I love you, too. Now get out of here. You have a long drive home.”

I grinned and nodded, exiting his home and heading to my truck. I threw my bag into the passenger side seat and stared out the windshield, peering into the large window that Wirt stared out of so often. I could see faint movement within, but the angle of the sun’s light made it impossible to see much else. I rested my back against the seat and let free a deep, heavy breath before I realized that my body was trembling. My legs felt like wet noodles and my hands were shaking badly. All that nervous energy that had been kept at bay while within Wirt’s aura of calm came crashing over me in a tidal wave.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” I muttered as I waited for my body to calm down. Today was a terrible day for me to forget deodorant. I could feel dampness seeping through my t-shirt, making me glad I put a hoodie over it. I breathed in and out steadily to try to calm myself, closing my eyes for just a moment as I rested my hands on the steering wheel. When I felt that I was calm enough to drive, I started the engine, turned on my music, and blasted BABBA as loudly as possible without destroying my hearing. I pulled out of Wirt’s short driveway and headed back toward Gravity Falls. My relationship with Wirt had changed despite how we both wanted to pretend that it hadn’t, and I had yet to fully understand what that meant.


	21. Chapter 21

I exhaled a long, deep breath as I watched Dipper’s truck leave the driveway. My body felt heavy from the waves of emotion that had leaked from it while we had talked. When he first said that we needed to talk, I feared that he had figured out my deep longing for him. It made me tremble, afraid that he would want to end our friendship entirely. Instead, he said to me the very thing that I had wanted to say to him for so long. It seemed that I was having all manner of unexpected conversations lately, and it was taking its toll on me. My body fell against the back of my armchair, my world having changed dramatically while still oddly staying the same. I stared up at the ceiling, my mind a complete blank.

Eventually I glanced at my ticking clock, reading the time. I needed to call Greg, but what would I even say to him? I could barely form thoughts in that moment, let alone complete sentences to say aloud. As I sat there, contemplating the words to say, I realized that I had no idea where my phone was. I’d set it aside last night, putting it on silent while we watched our awful movies, so wherever it was, it was likely very dead.

A long groan slipped from my lips and I pulled forward, moving aside a few items on the coffee table to reveal my phone. Its screen was black. It had died overnight. It had been running on very little battery life when I’d set it aside, so it wasn’t a surprise that it was incapacitated. I picked it up and plugged it into the wall charger, waiting for it to have enough juice to turn back on before I called Greg.

Calling Greg after what had just happened felt like a monumental task. Would I even tell him what happened or pretend that nothing happened at all? No. There was no use in pretending. I had to tell him. I had to tell someone, and he was the only person I could tell in good faith. I stared blankly at the phone for a long time, waiting for courage to fill my body, and when it never did, I simply dove in and hoped that I wouldn’t drown.

“Good day to you, brother o’ mine!” His glee was strangely comforting.

“Hi, Greg,” I said quietly, energy having fled from me long ago.

Concern must have filled him when he heard my voice. “What’s wrong, Wirt? Did something bad happen?”

I whimpered, “No. The opposite happened.”

The noises coming from his throat indicated his great confusion. “If something good happened, then why are you sounding like something bad happened?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted softly. “Greg, I... D-Dipper and I... We...”

“Uh-huh...?”

A strained sound choked from deep within me, “You were right. Dipper does still love me.”

“That’s great! See? It’s not so bad, right?”

“It’s, um,” I tried to find the words to say. My brain was so tired that it made it harder to grasp the words that would properly convey what I meant. “It’s more complicated than that. Or rather, it _feels_ more complicated than that...”

“But... isn’t this what you wanted?”

It was, I thought, but for some reason I didn’t feel the relief that I craved from such a confession. This should have been a massive weight lifted from my shoulders, but there was still uncertainty prickling at the back of my mind. My heart was light from hearing him tell me that he loved me, yet I still didn’t feel satisfaction. I let free a laugh that held no emotion behind it – it was simply a sound that my mouth made, “Things are complicated, Greg, but I think it’ll be okay.” I hoped it would be okay, at least.

“Are you sure?”

“Mm... yes, I think so.” I was noncommittal.

Greg made noises that gave no true indication to his thoughts. “Are you happy, though?”

My eyes had shifted out the window, following the trail left by a plane as it headed to a destination that wasn’t here. I swallowed, quantifying that word in my head. That light feeling in my chest was like a beautiful song echoing pleasantly against the walls of my heart, yet the shadows of worry lurked in the corners of that sanctuary as a reminder that darkness could find its way in and decimate that light in an instant. I tried to push away that shadow of worry, drawing that light further into me. I wanted that light to spread throughout me and fill me completely, as it was Dipper’s light and I wanted to cling to it for as long as possible. I wanted that light of his to pierce me completely and tear away the lingering worry in my mind. I had no reason to worry, after all, because we were still going to be together. Our relationship would simply need time to evolve. Life was no longer as simple as it had been in that gauzy summer memory we both shared in our youth. Though we were still technically the same people we had been back then, we were also very different. We needed to adapt our relationship to reflect our changes in personality as we grew into adulthood.

Dipper’s light, soft and brilliant like sunlight, warmed my heart and eased my worry, yet I feared that giving that sensation a name would diminish its value to me. However, I already knew what to label it, if I had to give it one for Greg’s sake. I sighed lightly, “Yeah... Yeah, I think I am. It feels like I’m happy, at least.”

“Then that’s what’s important,” he said satisfactorily. “And you should be happy! Mabel always says it’s like you two were made for each other!”

I blinked my gaze away from the sky, surprised by his words. “She said that to you?”

“Yeah, she was really hoping you two would get back together,” he said cheerfully, “especially after I told her how much you really, _really_ like Dipper still. She said she keeps telling Dipper that you guys need to get back together, but he always gets mad at her.”

“Well, I mean... it sounds like she’s butting into his business,” I said slowly, “but it seems like she was right. I’m not sure why he chose today, of all days, to tell me he still loved me, but I’m grateful for it nonetheless.”

“Did you guys kiss?”

I immediately blushed at the thought of kissing Dipper and stammered, “N-no, of course not! We’re still going to take things slowly.”

“Ooooh, is that why you said things are complicated?”

“Kinda,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure if I was the one making things complicated or if things were actually complicated. I supposed I just needed to wait until Dipper felt more comfortable with whatever his personal situation was. That was still something I wondered about at the time. It felt like he was hiding something from me, but I didn’t know what. “Hey, um... since you’re talking to Mabel now... has she mentioned anything about her great-uncles at all?”

“Uh... come to think of it, no.” There was a bit of surprise in his tone. “Her and Dipper were really close to those old guys, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, but Dipper barely mentions them at all,” I mused, tapping a finger against my knee. “I’m wondering if something happened to them.”

“They’re probably dead,” Greg said bluntly.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason they don’t talk about them is because they’re gone...”

“That’s sad to think about,” Greg said in a low voice. “Maybe Dipper is still hurting because they died recently and being in Gravity Falls makes him remember them and now he’s secretly sad and we don’t know it.”

“That’s a possibility that I’ve thought of before,” I sighed. I imagined that if either of Dipper’s great-uncles had passed away within the last 5 years, he was likely still grieving. He was particularly attached to his great-uncle Stanford – “Ford” for short – who I always remembered for the six fingers he had on each hand. It was an odd quirk that I found fascinating, but not as fascinating as I found Dipper back then. Or, Mason, as I would later learn his real name was. I remembered how he talked so fondly about his great-uncle Ford, as they both had interest in the supernatural. I wondered if that uncle was the one who instilled curiosity about the paranormal into Dipper. Even if that wasn’t the case, they were quite a pair whenever they were together. They talked scientific jargon so quickly that I could never keep up with them, and I eventually just let Dipper have his alone time with his uncle whenever they were together. Dipper could always easily find me afterward, since I had a favorite spot under a large tree in the forest where I would read the books I had brought with me.

The reason our family was in Gravity Falls at all that summer was because a relative of ours offered to let us vacation in their cabin. It was my mother’s idea that if we were together, as a family, in a place with spotty internet and cellular reception, then maybe I could form a better bond with my step-dad. It didn’t work, of course, but it did bring me to Dipper. I’ll always be grateful for that summer vacation because of that reason alone.

I first saw Dipper at Greasy’s Diner, while he ate there with his family. They looked so close and happy together, and I felt a bit jealous. It wasn’t until a few days later that we truly met. As a family outing, we visited the Mystery Shack, since it was a local attraction that was recommended to us, and Dipper was sweeping the floor in the gift shop. He was around my age and looked friendly, so I asked him about the place after we had been given the grand tour. I was surprised to learn that it was his great-uncle Stanley who had established it as a tourist trap, but he had since retired and only lived there during the summer. We talked for a long time after that, quickly becoming friends as we found common interests in shared nerdy ephemera – comic books and science fiction and the like. I immediately began to like him, starting on a friendly basis before our friendship quietly morphed from there. The Mystery Shack wasn’t too far from our cabin, which made it easy for me to trek over there on foot and steal Dipper away from his chores so we could spend time together in the wilderness, enjoying nature, adventures, and each other’s company. It took little time for me to realize that I had fallen in love with Dipper, and that he also was in love with me. We didn’t even need to say the words for us to understand each other’s feelings. The first time we kissed felt like it was a natural progression of our fondness for one another. It’s why when we parted, it devastated me more than I had ever anticipated.

I’d had a girlfriend before that summer, and I thought that we would also be together forever, just as most teenagers believe when they’ve found their first crush. Unfortunately, the spark between us faded quickly as it often does with young love, and we had a mutual and civil parting of ways before the beginning of summer. Being with Dipper, though, felt different. As I’ve said before, it was the most comfortable relationship that I’ve ever had with another person, and that fact still felt true, even with the complications that my mind kept feeding me. Even though things were a little awkward and strange now, it still felt as comfortable it did back then. I had felt such overwhelming emotion when that conversation had started, yet his simple actions and words were of incredible comfort to me. No one else in my past or present could make me feel like that when I was so close to having a panic attack. He always stood out for me because of that ability to keep me at peace even when I felt anxious or fearful.

“Maybe you should ask him,” Greg said brightly. “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, then at least you tried, right?”

“I could, yeah,” I said quietly, “but asking him now seems like it would be an invasion of privacy. We should probably wait a little longer.”

“I dunno,” Greg hummed, “if we wait too long, then we might miss out on the right time to ask.”

“We’ll just have to take that chance, then. I feel like it should be up to them to tell us when they’re ready to tell us, rather than us butting into their private life like that.”

“Okay,” he whined, though I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to heed my warning. “Oh, but I wanted to tell you something important!”

“You finally have dates for your move out here?” I hoped that was what he meant, and not something pointless and random.

“Well, kinda,” he said with a whimper. “The dorm wants me out by the end of the first week of June, so we’ll be driving out there some time around then. I don’t know when we’ll get there.”

“That’s... vague.” I could already feel frustration beginning to replace the warm light that had spread through my body. “You’re going to come straight here, right? No detours or distractions?”

“Yeah!” He laughed, then stopped mid-laugh, “Wait, no...? Which is the word I use to express, ‘Yes, we’re going to stop at a few tourist traps on the way’?”

“Greg...”

“Don’t worry! Mom and Dad said that they’ll be taking a plane back home, so we just need to get to Oregon before their flight leaves. It’ll be easy!” I really wished that he took things a little more seriously.

“I guess that’s fine, then,” I sighed. At least with our parents with him, I knew they would make sure that he was laser focused on getting here with plenty of time instead of being tortured by Greg’s frivolous distractions. Having a plane ticket meant that they had no choice but to arrive with enough time to unload Greg’s things into my house and maybe, possibly, rest. “Send me the date of their flight whenever they book it, okay?”

“Righty-o brother-o!” That was the best confirmation I was going to get from him, and I knew it.

“Good,” I said with a sigh. I was already exhausted from my conversation with Dipper, and talking to Greg was draining me of what little strength I had left. “So have you thought about any ideas for your future, or even tried to look for jobs in Bend? Anything?”

“Nope, not at all!” He seemed far too proud of himself.

“Please, Greg, this is important.”

He laughed lightly, “I’m joking! I’ve been doing some searching online and stuff, but mostly I’ve been recording my songs now that I know how to do that.”

“That’s a start,” I exhaled slowly. “I have a feeling Dipper would let you use his dungeon for better recordings if you asked him.”

“Dungeon? You mean his basement?”

“Yeah, he soundproofed it,” I yawned, reaching over to the sofa and grabbing my favorite blanket to drape it on my lap. Whenever this call was finished, I was going to take a nap.

“Oh man, recording in a soundproof dungeon sounds awesome!” Even without seeing his face, I could feel the heat of his megawatt smile bleeding through the phone.

“I thought you might like that idea,” I hummed, my free hand stroking the blanket lightly. “Hey, um... I need to get off the phone now.”

Greg made a high-pitched sound in disappointment, “But we haven’t been talking for very long!”

“Yeah, but,” I yawned again, this time louder and longer, “we were up late last night and having that conversation with Dipper really took it out of me. I’d like to rest up a little.”

He made another noise, softer this time, and it sounded like he understood what I was saying, “Then I’ll let you rest. When you go to bed tonight, you’ll have really happy dreams, won’t you?”

I laughed softly, “Yeah, I think so.” I wanted to have the brightest and happiest dreams.

“Then I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay, Greg.”

“Okay, then. Bye!!”

I said farewell with very little energy as Greg’s end of the line when silent. The phone’s red light was still burning as it continued to charge, tethered to the wall. It was this umbilical cord that kept me from doing what I had wanted to do the whole time I conversed with my brother, and now the opportunity could be properly grasped. I set the phone back onto the accent table, bunched up the blanket into my arms, and moved over to the sofa, flopping myself onto its soft cushions. It was still early afternoon and taking a nap would likely mess with my sleep that evening, but I didn’t care. I swaddled myself beneath my blanket and let my heavy eyes drift shut, the sound of Dipper’s voice whispering “I love you” echoing endlessly within my ears as acoustic memory of the most dazzling moment that I had experienced in this, my adult life. The words shined like stardust as they fluttered inside me, warming me with hope and outshining the muddy darkness of my anxiety as it tried to frame this as something to fear. This wasn’t something to fear. Dipper and I had acknowledged our feelings for each other, rekindling the fading embers of a love we once shared long ago. As I drifted into a short rest, I let those newly fueled embers burn hotly as both comfort and reassurance that everything would most likely be okay.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has nothing to do with this chapter, but I thought I'd tell this dumb story anyway. Yesterday, my brother injured his finger and called me up, telling me I needed to prepare a bandage for him. We were going to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is why he was coming over. (It was an excellent movie, by the way.) He shows up with a bloody finger and I ask him what kind of bandage he wants, since I have various types bandages in various sizes because I'm accident-prone. He says he doesn't care because a bandage is a bandage, so I give him a large plastic one because it's the first one I grabbed. He puts it on, using me as his trash can, then complains that he can't bend his finger. I asked him if this would be a problem and he said no.
> 
> This indeed became a problem.
> 
> Every chance he got, he reminded me that he couldn't bend his finger. "I can't carry the food, my finger won't bend!" "All I can do is point! Everyone will think I'm rude!" It was... exhausting. He was enjoying himself, making me do everything for him because HEAVEN FORBID HE LIFT HIS INJURED FINGER. Meanwhile, I've had way worse luck with finger injuries. I have: broken two fingers on an air mattress, my brother stapled my thumb to the floor, had both of the fingers I'd previously broken stapled to a desk, and accidentally stapled two completely different fingers together because I'm a moron.
> 
> ...I feel like the moral of this story is that I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a stapler.

The DD&MD game we had the next weekend was our last time playing as a duo, and I made it so that transitioning to having another player character would be seamless. Wirt worried that he would have to give up on Retar Thorntooth now that we were getting a new PC, but I reassured him that Greg’s inclusion in the game wasn’t going to change anything beyond having a new character in the mix. Greg’s presence promised to make the game much more exciting and challenging, which excited me as a GM.

After that, we had another weekend where it was just the two of us hanging out together. It was in no way romantic, either, as it was me driving out to Bend to help Wirt with locating and transporting a large chest for storage. He needed my truck more than he needed me, since what he was looking for was larger than what he could fit in the trunk of his little sedan. I’d become the friend with a truck. It wasn’t a bad outing, though, since we had lunch together before setting out to find the piece of furniture he was looking for.

I’d been to a few antique stores in the past, but never had I been to so many in one day. We were a little nervous about how this day would go at the start, since we were both fidgety when we sat together in the truck, but after driving all over the city and the suburbs looking for “the one,” we ended up not worrying so much about it. I would have thanked Wirt’s aura of calm, but I think it was more the exhaustion of driving around and trying to find whatever it was that Wirt was looking for. It felt a bit much to be going through all this effort just to find something that would ultimately be used for ancillary storage, but it was what he wanted. He wanted something that would last for years that was both beautiful and practical, and I admired that a little bit.

He did end up finding what he wanted, and it was actually really pretty. It was a big wooden chest with hand carved details on it and hand painted floral designs on the lid and sides. It was really nice and also a lot more expensive than I thought it would be, but I wasn’t the one paying for it. I didn’t even have to pay for gas because after I helped Wirt get the chest out of my truck and into his house, he handed me a wad of cash as an apology for forcing me to come with him. I tried to refuse it, but he insisted. I reluctantly took the money and offered to buy dinner for him, which he politely declined. I wasn’t sure why he declined, especially since we both knew this would likely be the last time we saw each other for a while. With Greg arriving in another week or so, I thought for sure that he’d take me up on the offer, if only to spend just a little more time with me, but he declined so quickly. I didn’t let on that his declination hurt, and I just accepted it as him wanting to utilize what little time he had left before Greg’s arrival to continue getting his house ready. Besides, we had another game set up for July featuring our new PC, so we would see each other again soon. We didn’t set up a new time for hanging out, other than tentatively setting up a time to go see a movie. It was summer blockbuster season, after all, and we needed to see the sequels to our favorite franchises. Otherwise, that was the most I could hope for, despite how much I wanted to see him more and more. Wirt expressed the same sentiment, and tried to be optimistic that if Greg’s move into his home went smoothly, then we could maybe hang out sooner, but for now we just needed to leave things flexible.

Greg arrived in early June and Wirt refused to let me help with the moving in process. When he refused, it sounded more like a warning than anything else. I couldn’t remember much of anything about their parents, other than what they sort of looked like and that they seemed kind of nice, but I figured it would’ve been weird if someone they barely knew just showed up randomly and started helping around. Besides, it seemed like things were hectic over there, so I tried my best to stay away, keeping to myself and my personal projects instead of butting into that mess. I was patient enough to wait until things calmed down or at least wait until their parents had left.

In the meantime, I still hadn’t told Mabel about the fact that Wirt and I were maybe, sorta, an item again. Wirt told me that he told Greg, and since I’d given Greg my sister’s number, I assumed that she likely already knew about it. We’d had a lot of phone conversations since after that whole, er, “incident,” yet she hadn’t mentioned or implied that she knew. She’d stopped teasing me about her fantasies of me and Wirt, which had made me suspicious that she already knew, yet she didn’t confront me about it at all. I assumed that she was waiting for me to tell her.

So, I told her.

“Took you long enough!” She was giggling and I could hear her jewelry jingling as she did so. “Greg told me right after Wirt told him, but I said to myself that I was gonna wait for you to tell me, just to see how long it’d take for you to do it.”

I groaned, “I didn’t know I was involved in some kind of bet you made with yourself.”

“A little over a month’s not bad,” she snickered. “I was thinking it’d take you at least a year just to finally realize that you’re still totally in love with Wirt, but it took a _way_ shorter time than I thought!”

“You bet on that, too?!”

“It’s not like I won anything for it,” she laughed. “But I’m really happy for you! C’mon, though, I need details. What happened?”

I sighed, “Didn’t you hear all that from Greg?”

Mabel whined, “He didn’t have any details give! He didn’t ask Wirt for that kinda info, so I’ve been waiting in _agony_ for you to get the guts to tell me everything yourself!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you details,” I grimaced, not really wanting to give her details. “So what exactly do you want from me?”

“I want _all_ the details,” she giggled again.

“That’s not helpful, you know,” I grumbled.

“Okay, fine!” She was clearly pouting. I could tell even over the phone line. “How about... you tell me when you finally stopped being in denial.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I hummed, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on my desk. I was at my computer, doing some low-stakes internet browsing as I fell deep into Memory Alpha. Wirt’s pizza slicer made me want to re-watch some Star Trek episodes, and now I was binging every series in order. I was already far into season 4 of Deep Space Nine when I had a sudden urge to research Cardassian society. That took me down a rabbit hole and now I was just clicking on every link in that extensive Star Trek wiki. “After the musical I had an existential meltdown in my truck.”

“That was like three months ago, Dippin’ Sauce,” she said, clearly trying to hold in a laugh. “And you only told him about it last month or something, right?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t tell him about that specifically _at all_ ,” I cringed. There was no way I was going to tell Wirt about the mental breakdown I had in a parking lot while trying to come to terms with the fact that I was a giant idiot who was in a lot of denial of his own feelings.

“Then what did you tell him?”

“Uh, I just said, ‘Wirt, I love you,’ and he said, ‘I love you, too,’ and that was kinda it...” There was definitely more, but I wasn’t going to give her any further details than what I needed to.

“Oh, Dipper, that’s sweet, but also not what I’m looking for,” she hummed.

I sighed loudly, “What are you looking for? We had a movie night at his house, I slept in his guestroom, he made brunch the next day, and before I left we had that little exchange. It wasn’t that big of a deal.” That was a lie. It was very much a big deal, but I didn’t want to give her any fuel for gossip.

“A movie night? Wait...” her voice was reaching a higher pitch now, “was that the day when you guys went to Blockbuster without me?!”

I couldn’t help but let out a loud laugh. “Yeah, that’s the day. Well, the day after, since I stayed over, but yeah, it was that weekend.”

“You guys suck,” she chuckled. It was obvious that there were no hard feelings. “It sounds like that was a nice time to tell him, though. But you guys still aren’t for real dating, right? Greg said something about you guys taking it slow.”

“Yeah, I’m still not looking to date anyone just yet,” I said softly.

“But why not?” She sounded a little annoyed with me. “You already confessed to Wirt again, and you guys are clearly doing stuff together, so why not just admit that you’re dating?”

I shrugged, staring at an article about Keldon-class ships, “I just can’t right now.”

Mabel became eerily silent on her end, which was unlike her. I thought maybe she got distracted by something, but if that was the case, then she would have mentioned it to me. Instead, it was calm. This quiet lasted for only a few seconds, but it felt so much longer. Finally, she spoke stiffly, “Dipper, you’re not still trying to–”

“Don’t, Mabel,” I said fiercely, interrupting her words. I didn’t want her to say what she was about to say.

“Dipper, you can’t let this continue to–”

“Mabel!” I yelled, no longer focusing on the computer screen, my voice directed squarely at the phone sitting on the desk. “You know you’re not going to stop me. If there’s a chance, you know I’m going to take it.”

“Even if it means putting yourself at risk?”

“No one else wants to try,” I said sternly. “Even _you_ won’t help me.”

“I said I would help as much as I can, but what you’re doing right now is just...” Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she wanted to say.

“Is just what?” I dared her to say it.

“I just don’t want you getting hurt,” she mumbled, “or worse...”

“I’ll be fine, Mabel,” I said, trying to reassure her. “I’ve stared down a chaos god and lived to tell about it. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but we did that together,” she said quietly. “Going ahead like this, alone, is just asking for trouble.”

“And what would you have me do? Give up?” Even if she’d told me to give up, I was too stubborn at the time to stop what I was doing just for her sake.

Again, Mabel grew quiet and I didn’t like it. She was judging me from all the way in Piedmont and I knew it. In the silence, I went back to looking at information on Cardassian military vessels, hoping it would calm me down a little. I felt anger in that moment, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I labeled it as frustration instead.

Mabel stayed quiet a little longer before speaking, “I don’t want you to give up, no, but you should at least think about everyone else’s feelings, too. We’re all feeling what you’re feeling.”

I snorted, “If you felt the same, then you’d be up here helping me out.”

“You know I can’t leave right now,” she said tiredly. “It should say something, though, if even Soos isn’t actively helping you.”

“Mabel, I don’t want to talk about this with you again,” I said, taking my glasses off and rubbing my eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was the conversation hurting my eyes or if it was just computer eye strain.

“You know,” she said slowly, “you could tell Wirt about it. He’s an impartial party, right? And he kinda needs to know what you’re doing.” She sighed, “I was totally hoping you stopped being such a dummy, but instead of having fun adventures in Gravity Falls, you’re just torturing yourself.”

“It’s not torture,” I said in a low voice, covering my mouth with my hand. I would later learn that I was indeed torturing myself by keeping up with what I was doing in secret at the Mystery Shack, but at the time I was speaking the truth as far as I knew it. “And telling Wirt is exactly why I was trying to not date anyone in the first place. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him again...” That statement, as it left my mouth, was immediately a lie and I knew it wholeheartedly even as I said it.

“You don’t really mean that, and we both know it,” Mabel said sharply. “Just tell him the next time you see him, okay? There’s only like two outcomes I can think of, and neither of them involves him dumping you. He really likes you, and you really like him. But you gotta think about not just what’s good for you, Dipper, but what’s good for everyone. You can’t be selfish like this anymore, okay?”

She wasn’t saying anything that she hadn’t already said before, and as irritating as that was, I felt like I needed to at least placate her. I sat back in my desk chair as it made its familiar noises with the movement and sighed, “Fine, I’ll tell him. I won’t tell him everything, but I’ll at least give him a summary. Will that make you happy?”

“Better than nothing!” Her voice sounded much lighter. “But you gotta promise me that you’ll do it. You know I’ve got ways of figuring out if you did or didn’t.”

“Yeah, you’ll just ask Greg or something,” I grumbled. “Okay, I promise I’ll tell him when I get the chance to. I probably won’t see him again until next month, so remind me then. How’s that?”

“Oh, you know I’m gonna bug ya,” she laughed.

“I wouldn’t expect less from you,” I smirked, returning to the Star Trek wiki and clicking on a link to take me to information on the Romulan Tal Shiar. “Now, can we finally change the subject to something else?”

I could hear her pondering that for a moment before brightly exclaiming, “Yeah, let’s talk about boy bands!”

I laughed lightly at that, knowing I was sure to be in for a ride. We talked for quite a while, vacillating between topics she liked and topics I liked, neither of us getting too annoyed at the other as the conversation remained lighthearted. Eventually, we hung up and I pulled up the next episode of DS9 that I needed to watch. There had to be a good time to tell Wirt at least a little of what I’d been keeping from him, but I wasn’t so sure that bringing it up the next time we saw each other was a good idea, since that would either be going to a flashy action movie or playing DD&MD. Neither seemed like the optimal place to be telling Wirt my semi-dark secrets.

The symphonic melody of Deep Space Nine’s opening theme blared from my computer’s speakers and I felt the tingle of an idea percolating in my brain. It wouldn’t be a date, of course, but if Wirt agreed to this activity, then it might afford me the perfect opportunity to tell him at least some of the truth. Maybe not everything, but at least some things. I just needed to pick a good time and day to set it up for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I highly recommend that everyone watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's so good and so important.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in the mid-1990s, we went and saw the Stargate movie. I loved it, but my dad was quite upset. During the car ride home, he ranted about how the movie "stole his idea" because he had believed for most of his life that aliens had aided in the construction of the pyramids and influenced much of the ancient Egyptian empire. My brother and I were gobsmacked over this knowledge that he actually believed in that kind of ridiculous conspiracy theory. He'd apparently told many of his friends and family about this conspiracy theory of his when he was younger, but stopped when he was older because of the way my brother and I were looking at him. We were 10-years-old and judging our father HARD. This experience was what started me down the path into becoming interested in conspiracy theories, mainly those regarding extraterrestrials. Tales like that of the Hopkinsville goblin or various stories of abduction experiences really fascinate me.
> 
> Speaking of extraterrestrials, I saw a UFO once and it wasn't very impressive. Folks always hype up UFOs like they're some kind of spiritual experience that'll change your life forever, but they're kinda meh. The one I saw was just a weird hovering light that followed my car for a bit then zipped straight up into the sky and disappeared. Very disappointing.
> 
> Update: I just saw another UFO and it was as underwhelming as the first one. What's up with UFOs being so incredibly boring?

I could very well lie and say that everything went smoothly in regards to Greg’s move into my house, but I honestly cannot. It was hectic and bordering on disastrous. Without going into too many details, as I know that I can be a bit verbose when I write, my parents did indeed keep Greg focused on the task of driving to the Pacific Northwest as efficiently as possible, which afforded them more time than I wanted for them to be staying in my house. They, in short order, kicked me out of my own bedroom, upended much of the work I had done in preparing my home for Greg’s arrival, and within a few hours it appeared that a tornado of familial goodwill had claimed my house away from me. Thankfully, they were only here for three days and having them around was helpful, but I was incredibly grateful when they finally did leave. It was too much stress packaged in a tiny amount of time.

After that, it then became the task for me and Greg to reorient ourselves with being under the same roof. Again, I’m not going to lie. Greg is a nuisance most of the time. He stays up late, makes weird noises, sings very loudly all the time, and isn’t the best at picking up after himself. Our parents did instill good manners and hygiene into him when he was younger, but it has always been a challenge for him to retain that knowledge and utilize it for his own benefit. I didn’t want to seem like I was being too hard on him, so for a week or so I let him do whatever he wanted... within reason, of course. If he wanted to sleep in, then fine. If he wanted to eat junk food for dinner, then fine. If he wanted to go for days without bathing, then no, that wasn’t fine. It felt eerily familiar of an earlier time in our lives, and it was scary how I fell so easily back into my big brother role to keep him in check.

Greg did find a job working at a nearby grocery store, and I was amazed that he found work so quickly. At least it meant that I wouldn’t have to force him to do things like bathe every now and then. Having a bit of income meant that he could also help with the increase in money I’d have to shell out for bills. He was already increasing my electricity bill by connecting various gaming consoles to my television and playing games at all hours of the day. He also wasn’t the type to turn off the lights in rooms after he left. I told him repeatedly how to better utilize the electricity in the house, only for him to almost immediately forget what I told him. It was incredibly frustrating.

Dipper finally got back in contact with me at the beginning of July. He had stopped texting me altogether during most of June, likely because I had sent him a frantic text after my family arrived and he sensed that I was probably having a difficult time. Seeing his name light up across my phone screen filled me with great joy, and we soon were texting back and forth again as though our hiatus from each other had never happened.

The world was verdant and beautiful outside, and I longed to enjoy it. In summer I had begun a tradition of taking off an entire week and dedicating it to reading through my backlog of books that I had accumulated over the year. Though many of the trees in my yard were small, there was one that was tall enough that I could place a creaky lounge chair under its short radius of shade and relax with a small picnic basket of snacks and a thermos of sweet lemonade nestled gently in the soft grass. I had always enjoyed reading outside, finding it a relaxing pastime that reminded me of that long ago vacation in Gravity Falls. With Greg now being here, I was thinking of not doing my now yearly ritual of relaxing at home. I would have to do something else for my vacation, and likely have to actually go somewhere beyond the city limits of Bend.

“Wanna go to the Gravity Falls history museum?”

That simple question was proposed via text message one cloudy workday during lunch break. It was innocuous enough, and I honestly needed to get away from Bend for a little bit. However, I wasn’t sure how I felt about leaving Greg alone in my house without supervision. During the work week I already was nervous about the state of my home by the time I returned after leaving him there for nearly 9 hours, despite knowing that he had a job to go to during the day as well as his own personal projects to keep him occupied. Even so, I worried that I would return to the charred remains of my house if I spent any extra time away from monitoring him. Going out with Dipper meant that I would have to put faith in Gregory to behave himself. In my mind, I still pictured him as a child, playing with his infinite imagination and doing everything in his power to infuriate me, yet I knew that he wasn’t like that anymore. Yes, he could seem irresponsible at times, but I had to keep reminding myself that Greg’s an adult. Technically.

I mulled over the question for longer than I needed to before telling Dipper that I would love to join him at the museum. He promptly followed up by asking if Saturday was fine, and I replied that it was perfect. I had already gone through an entire month of limiting my usual weekend and after work plans or canceling them entirely, so I supposed this would be a reintroduction of doing things I ordinarily would have been doing on a Saturday. Even with our newly rekindled relationship, going out with him like this didn’t feel to me like it would be a date. We were just hanging out like we had been as we slowly built up our relationship again. Instead of picking up where we had left off before, we were back at the first level and working our way up to where we had once been. I didn’t mind the slow pace, as it afforded me more time to get to know the adult Dipper instead of holding fast to an image of him that was long in the past.

Saturday rolled around quickly and it turned out that my worries of Greg bringing my house to ruins were unfounded. He had to work that Saturday, which meant that the house would be empty of occupants for most of the day while we were both away. Greg told me to tell Dipper he said hi, and that was one of the first things I relayed to Dipper when we met up at the grand entrance to the museum.

The Gravity Falls Museum of History was a large, imposing Romanesque building made of limestone and reinforced by large ionic columns. Flanking the impressive stone steps leading up to its entrance were two large owl statues sitting atop shorter columns to greet each patron of this structure and inspire knowledge to enter their hearts and minds. In a town that was otherwise quaint in its Americana and pioneer influenced architecture, the museum stood out as looking like something that would fit more in the state capitol rather than in the center of such an unassuming sleepy town. Large redwood trees towered majestically behind the building as the only reminder that you were still in a small town hidden within the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

We each paid for our own entrance fees before casually walking through the exhibits in chronological order. Our first stop was at the beginning, when the valley of Gravity Falls was first created millions of years ago. Dipper, being the person he is, regaled me with a tale about how the valley was originally created some 30 million years ago when a large extraterrestrial craft cut through the cliffs surrounding Gravity Falls and the collision of it impacting with the ground was what caused the valley to exist, explaining that that was why there’s a UFO-shaped hole in the cliffs. I laughed politely at this assertion, and he laughed with me, which meant that he was most likely pulling my leg with his story, though there was something in his expression that made me think that perhaps he believed his tale to some extent.

After this geological history of the origins of the area itself, the exhibits led to the marks of mankind upon the land, highlighting the indigenous people who used to call the valley home before they “mysteriously” evacuated the area in great haste. It seemed like a good majority of the artifacts from this period were acquired from the Northwest family who were descended from the town founder. Many of the artifacts depicted normal, everyday life for the indigenous people who once called this land home, and there were large images of cave paintings with similar motifs, though it seemed like they loved triangular imagery in their art, which was a common shape in many ancient cultures as well. Again, Dipper made light of things, stating that the triangular patterns were depictions of a creature called Bill Cipher, who he described as some kind of inter-dimensional chaos god or demon or... something. He continued to explain that these people were the first to try and make contact with this creature in an attempt for this Bill person to cross into our realm and... destroy it...? I remembered Dipper mentioning this creature before, back when we were youngsters, but the fact that he was still saying such nonsense as an adult was a bit unnerving. He said a few of the artifacts and iconography depicted the eventual Weirdmageddon that swept Gravity Falls just before his thirteenth birthday, and that he couldn’t really talk in great detail about the event due to a town ordinance called the Never Mind All That Act. I was perplexed to say the least. Laughing was all I could do to keep myself from rolling my eyes at all of this. I had expected this to be a very mild outing, but Dipper was in full conspiracy theory mode, it seemed. I shrugged it off, thinking it might just be his immense knowledge on the subject, since I remembered seeing a 7-part series on this Weirdmageddon event in his podcast’s episode catalog but decided not to dive into it, what with it being seven episodes long.

It didn’t help that when we got to the town’s founding in the mid-1800s, Dipper casually asserted that the town founder, General Nathaniel Northwest, was a fraud and that the federal government was using its power to maintain the conspiracy to hide a national embarrassment that he was not at liberty to divulge any further details of. “If I say anything else, then I’ll probably get arrested and sent to Washington D.C. against my will... _again_.” This trip was sapping me of my energy and making me begin to regret having maintained my crush on this man. Did he really believe all this nonsense, or was he just saying it to get a laugh out of me?

Eventually we found ourselves in one of the many artifact rooms, sitting on a bench as we stared at a curious, triangular sculpture. One thing was for certain about this museum and this area in general: Everyone loved triangles and eyes. Many of the objects on display that weren’t taxidermy or mannequins or photographs had triangular imagery or prominent details of eyes, sometimes even combinations of both. It was odd to say the least, but Gravity Falls is an odd place. Dipper had finally stopped prattling on about conspiracy theory nonsense and we were having a casual conversation, mainly about what we planned on doing for dinner now that we were nearly finished with our museum visit. Though the building itself was fairly large, the main part of the museum that could be accessed by visitors was small. Likely there were rooms beyond the visible walls that held their rotating collection pieces and items yet to be displayed, which made me forgiving in how small the main gallery was.

“You don’t really believe in that stuff, right?” I asked after a short bout of silence fell upon us.

“You mean all the conspiracy theory stuff?” He looked at me queerly from under the brim of his hat. Today he was wearing a trucker hat bearing the logo of his podcast on it. I nodded and he continued, “It’s what I’ve lived through, mostly, so yeah. I can show you evidence later, if you want to see it, though it might still make you a nonbeliever.”

He said it so coolly, as though he knew that I would ask him that at some point. Evidence... Did he really have evidence to back up his preposterous claims? I know that weird things exist in Gravity Falls. I’ve seen a plaidypus and met the gnomes and the Manotaurs and even the Multi-Bear (who is quite friendly), so I wasn’t exactly in denial that such things could exist. Perhaps this Bill Cipher character that he mentioned before was a real being, but conspiracy theories were a different beast. Cryptids could always be explained as creatures that just haven’t been discovered or scientifically studied before, but believing that the government was covering up who the true founder of a small town in the middle of nowhere was seemed outlandish. Why would the government be so invested in something like that? And while I could believe that extraterrestrial life exists beyond the confines of our solar system, it was a bit farfetched to assume that the UFO-like shape in the cliffs surrounding town was formed by an ancient alien spacecraft that crash landed here millions of years ago. It all sounded ridiculous, just as his speculation about what my personal experience in the Unknown was ridiculous. It was all absurd and ridiculous and completely unnecessary. I passed it off as excitement due to his interest in the paranormal and the strange, but to actually believe in some of these garbage theories seemed incredibly dangerous to me.

“It would need to be really compelling evidence,” I replied quietly.

He shrugged, “It’s compelling to me, but I understand if you’re skeptical. Some things do sound farfetched, but I know what the truth is for me. Mabel and I have uncovered many secrets about this town that seem completely unbelievable, even with evidence.” He glanced to me and I shook my head, frowning a little. “That room with the eyes,” he said as he waved a hand in the direction of said room, “it hides a dark secret. Those strange paintings by the indigenous people of Gravity Falls were an omen. Even this dumb artwork has a secret,” he pointed to the strange sculpture we sat in front of.

“It’s just an abstract piece of art,” I said dryly, rolling my eyes.

“Is it, though?” He smirked, “Try looking at it upside-down.”

I sighed and pulled out my phone, sneaking a picture of the piece of art and inverting it. I blinked at the image, realizing that Dipper was absolutely correct. The artwork was upside-down and turning it to its correct position revealed that it was actually a relief of an angel pointing solemnly. “Why is it upside-down, though?”

“It’s a clue from the town founder conspiracy. That angel is in the cemetery. If you move her finger, it opens a trap door leading to a vault of conspiracy materials that the government has been hiding down there for over two centuries.” He said all of this so casually, as though none of it sounded ridiculous and that it was all factual. “Just like how in the room full of eyes, if you follow the eyes to a specific artifact, pressing it reveals a secret passageway to a dark area of the building that used to hold meetings of a secret society known as the Society of the Blind Eye. They were erasing people’s memories of all the weird stuff that happens in Gravity Falls, but we dealt with that problem.”

I lifted an eyebrow at that. “You and Mabel did that?”

“And Soos and Wendy, if you remember them.”

“Vaguely,” I said quietly. I still wasn’t sure if I should believe anything he was telling me. These were some mighty tall tales.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he said as he stretched his legs in front of him. “The truth is what you make of it, after all, and even with compelling evidence, a skeptic will never truly believe even if they see it with their own two eyes. It’s impressive how well a person can willfully believe what they wanna believe with unwavering conviction.”

“So you think I’m a skeptic, then?”

“You’ve had your own paranormal experience,” he sighed as he relaxed his back against the hard wooden bench again, “but that doesn’t mean that you’ll believe every strange thing you’re presented with. That’s healthy skepticism. You’ve seen gnomes before and didn’t force yourself to not believe in them after you saw them, just as you continue to believe in the adventures you had in the Unknown, whether or not they really happened. I could show you the vault where every government conspiracy theory is hidden, if you want me to, but it’d be up to you to believe whether or not it’s real evidence of anything at all. I can’t force belief into someone, but I can hope that they have the capacity to be understanding of another person’s truth.”

It was sound enough reasoning for me. It felt right, at least. Despite how everyone around me chose to disbelieve the fantastic adventure Greg and I had in the Unknown, we knew our own truth. If Dipper was offering these tall tales as his own truth, then perhaps there was some merit in partially accepting them. After all, it was his truth in much the same way the experience I had in the Unknown was my own truth. It wasn’t entirely fair of me to simply dismiss his experiences as ridiculous, even though it all did sound ridiculous.

“If you believe in those conspiracy theories, then,” I began, “what are the ones you don’t entirely believe in?”

He hummed thoughtfully, clearly trying to dig through his vast knowledge of conspiracy theories to find ones that he wasn’t too fond of. “Well, there’s definitely stuff like the Philadelphia Project that I find fascinating but also don’t believe entirely. A lot of conspiracy theories about government cover-ups are really outlandish, especially when it comes to, like, the flat Earth and lizard people and the Illuminati. Like... I don’t really believe that the Denver airport is as conspiratorial as people make it out to be–”

“What?”

“It’s just a very weird, poorly designed airport.” I was now very curious about the Denver airport. “And all those conspiracies about famous people being part of the Illuminati can be easily thrown in the trash...”

He paused to gather his thoughts and I asked quickly, “What about the Denver airport?”

Dipper laughed and shook his head, “It would take way too long to explain that one. I have an episode about it, if you’re really curious.” I nodded and made a mental note to look that up, because that seemed like something that shouldn’t be conspiratorial at all. He continued his thoughts, “Then there’s the real out there stuff, like the theory that Jesus Christ was created by the Romans,” what, “and Avril Lavigne is dead and replaced by her friend, “ _what_ , “and classics like the hollow Earth and Area 51 and Göbekli Tepe and the Antikythera device.” I had no idea what those last two were. “Trust me, I may believe in a lot of weird things, but not all of the weird things. I don’t believe in a good majority of the weird conspiracies out there, but I like to research them and be aware of them.”

I sat there dumbfounded, incapable of knowing what to say. Did I want to know what this Antikythera device was? Was I really curious to know why people believed that Avril Lavigne was dead? I didn’t know. I didn’t know that so many conspiracies existed in the world. I knew about the flat Earth and Area 51 and even the hollow Earth, but that other stuff was so incredibly out there that I didn’t know what to make of it.

We fell quiet, and I hoped that Dipper didn’t think it was because I was quietly judging him and his hobby. Though I did question how someone could be so interested in such strange things, I couldn’t fault him for having a hobby that he was genuinely interested in. To fill the space with noise again – noise beyond the faint chatter of other museum patrons – he said quietly, “You know, I kinda have something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Instinctively, I stiffened. The last time he said he wanted to talk to me, he confessed his love for me, but I had no idea what he could confess to me now. As though he sensed my tension, he moved a hand over to mine and held it gently, his warmth seeping into my skin quickly. I swallowed, looking down at our hands, “It’s not about conspiracy theories, is it?”

He chuckled lightly, “No, not entirely.”


	24. Chapter 24

Wirt gave me an odd look, one that read that he didn’t really believe me when I said that this wouldn’t be a conversation involving conspiracy theories. Honestly, it was a valid reaction.

I kept his hand cradled in mine and spoke gently, “I think you know I’ve been hiding something from you, right?”

He nodded and spoke quietly, “Yeah... I mean, you haven’t even told me what you do for a living...”

That surprised me. I let go of his hand and moved away from him a little, “I thought I told you that when I first called you months ago.”

“Nope, you didn’t,” he said firmly. “All you said is that you moved here for work, but didn’t elaborate. That’s why I thought you were a full-time podcaster.”

Thinking back on all the conversations we’d had, I was suddenly becoming aware of the fact that I honestly hadn’t told him what my job was. I laughed, shaking my head, “I’m such an idiot. I thought I told you! I’m so sorry.”

“So... that’s not the secret?”

“No, it’s not a secret at all!” I chuckled a little more before resting my back against the bench again, “I really thought I told you, but I guess I’m a moron.”

“Well, then,” he hummed, “what do you do?”

“I work in the propulsion lab at a private aerospace company that’s based here in Gravity Falls,” I answered, folding my arms over my chest. “Basically, I make sure rockets go up and not down.”

Wirt looked at me curiously, “You’re a rocket scientist?”

“I guess so,” I said, moving a hand to touch my chin. I mean, he wasn’t wrong. “The company I work for set up shop here because they liked how the place looked like it was made by a UFO and how there’s always weird stuff happening.”

“Your Ph.D. in physics is for... working on spacecraft?” He sounded both confused and awed.

I laughed lightly, “Kinda, yeah. That one is for applied physics, but I focused on propulsion physics because, well, I like the idea of working on engines. The other two are for mechanical engineering and parapsychology.”

“W-wait,” he stammered, “you have more than one Ph.D.?”

I nodded slightly, giving him a nervous smile, “Yeah... It’s not as many as Grunkle Ford, but I’m pretty proud to have three.”

“You’re younger than me and have three doctorates...” His expression now matched the confusion and awe in his voice.

Sheepishly, I looked away to glance at the artwork we sat in front of while the murmurs of people faded in and out behind us. I didn’t like telling people about this kind of thing. They always treated me differently when they learned I was smart and I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel smart. What good is intellect if it drives people to treat you differently? I like being treated like a normal person living a normal life. I probably subconsciously didn’t tell Wirt about my job because I was afraid that he would treat me differently if he knew. I must have been worried that he wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore, which was silly to worry about, but his reaction at the time was making me worried that the moment had finally come for him to no longer treat me like the Dipper he'd been interacting with these last few months.

“What’s parapsychology?”

The question interrupted my worries and shot me back to reality. “Huh?”

“You said you have a Ph.D. in parapsychology,” he clarified. “What’s that?”

“O-oh, it’s, um,” I rubbed my chin, trying to figure out how best to word it, “it’s the study of psychological and mental phenomena that can’t be explained by traditional science. You know, like telepathy and psychokinesis... even NDEs. I hadn’t really studied much about NDEs before we met again, since my thesis was focused on apparitional experiences.” I could see him preparing to ask me what an apparitional experience was, so I went ahead and explained, “Apparitional experiences are ghost encounters.”

“Ghosts?” He laughed lightly, glancing to the upside-down artwork before us. “That makes sense. That sounds exactly like something you’d want a Ph.D. in.”

“Thanks?” I couldn’t tell if that was a compliment.

“So if that wasn’t your big secret,” he asked slowly, “then what’s your real secret?” His eyes moved to glance at me slightly, “Is it about your great-uncles?”

It made sense to me afterward that of course he would have assumed that that was what I was hiding from him, but in that moment I was surprised that he’d figured it out. I nodded slowly, “Yeah, it’s about them.”

Wirt shifted, moving himself to face me as completely as he could on the bench, touching a hand to my knee. I unfolded my arms, resting both of my hands atop his. My gaze stayed focused not on him, but on our hands. He remained quiet for a little longer before he spoke again, his voice hushed, “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

Again I nodded, licking my lips. “Yeah,” I said weakly, “they’re gone.”

Wirt’s hand slid from beneath mine and soon I felt his arms around my shoulders, pulling me close against his body. We stayed like that for a long while, my eyes searching the floor for nothing while he held me gently and wordlessly. When he finally did pull away, I could feel myself yearning for him to return his arms to their spot around my shoulders, his thin fingers and delicate palms resting warmly against my t-shirt fabric. I knew it couldn’t last, though.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” he said quietly. His body was still close to me even though the embrace had ended. “I understand if you’re still dealing with their loss. You can tell me when you’re ready, okay?”

I shook my head slightly, “No, I should tell you now. Mabel wanted me to tell you.”

“But if you’re not ready, then you shouldn’t have to.” He was being far too kind to me.

“I’ll never be ready, so I need to say it now while I can.”

Wirt let out a sigh but I couldn’t see his expression. My vision was still focused at the floor. “All right,” he exhaled.

“They were sailing in the Bermuda Triangle,” I began, hunching myself over to rest my elbows on my thighs, my forearms and hands dangling in the space between my legs, “when they disappeared. The coast guard searched for them at the last coordinates they’d given, but nothing was there. No wreckage, no debris, no bodies... nothing. They just vanished. That was almost two years ago...”

I could feel Wirt touch a hand to my back, rubbing it gently, “I’m sorry... Without bodies, it must be hard to—”

“I don’t think they’re dead, Wirt,” I said quickly, looking up at him. There was pity in his eyes and in his voice, and I didn’t want it. “They’re not dead. Nothing vanishes without a trace. That’s not how things in this dimension work.”

There was a complicated series of expressions Wirt’s face made before it finally settled on an expression halfway between disappointment and surprise. “Let’s... let’s assume you’re right, and they’re alive somewhere. Where would they be? Isn’t the Bermuda Triangle far from any islands or land masses?”

“It includes Miami and a good portion of the Bahamas,” I clarified, “but the area where they disappeared has no islands nearby, no.”

Wirt pulled away from me, resting his back against the bench again with his hands folded neatly in his lap, “Then it was probably a tropical storm, right?”

I shook my head, “The coast guard and the National Weather Service both confirmed that there were no storms in the area at the time of their disappearance.”

He sighed, looking up at the ceiling, “You think it’s aliens, don’t you?”

“That’s my assumption, but I won’t know until I get there.”

“Until you get there?” He furrowed his brows, looking seriously at me, “You can’t go looking for them by yourself!”

“Everyone else assumes they’re dead,” I spoke sternly, “except for Mabel, but she’s no help. If there’s a chance of them being alive, then I’m going to take it, even if no one is willing to help me.”

“That’s suicide.”

“I’m nearly finished with everything I need to go out there and look,” I said, waving a hand to dismiss his accusation of this being suicide.

“But if it was aliens, then wouldn’t there be a spaceship out beyond the moon or something?” The way he said it implied that he didn’t believe in extraterrestrials or their possible intervention in this situation.

“The theory is that these extraterrestrials aren’t in space,” I said with a sigh, “but somewhere under the ocean. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford had a submarine made from modified alien tech from the spaceship buried under Gravity Falls. I’ve been working off of Ford’s blueprints to make a second one so that I can look for them. If something happened to them suddenly, then they likely took the sub and are somewhere underwater.”

Wirt blinked at me several times, “ _What_?”

“I’m building a submarine,” I repeated. “It’s in the basement of the Mystery Shack.”

He slumped down against the back of the bench and I could see life draining from him. This was testing his willpower, and he was trying his best to keep up with me. I was aware of the fact that he wasn’t big into conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomena, so today’s outing was likely his worst nightmare with how I had yet to shut up about those things. “Mason,” he said in a low voice, the utterance of that name causing me to straighten up a little in my seat, “this is unhealthy. Do you really believe there are extraterrestrial beings living under the ocean?”

“I-I mean, it’s a possibility,” I stammered, darting my eyes away from Wirt’s, though I could feel him pressing his intense gaze on me again. It reminded me of when we were at the café after the musical. I shouldn’t have told him this. I should have just left him thinking that my great-uncles were dead and that I was just trying to cope like a normal person. I’d said too much.

“You said Mabel’s not helping you,” his voice was oddly calm and it felt a bit terrifying. “How come?”

“She said the same thing you did,” I spoke quietly, “that if I do this, I’ll die.”

“She’s the smart one in this instance,” he snorted. “What good is having three doctorates if you want to die in the ocean so badly?”

“If I can save them, then why should it matter?” I frowned, chancing a glance at Wirt. He looked sterner than he had after the musical. I looked away quickly, “I stood up to Bill Cipher just fine. I can take on the ocean.”

“Nature is different,” he snapped. “A creature with consciousness can be become predictable, but nature is unpredictable. The ocean could easily swallow you up, just as it swallowed your great uncles, and leave no trace of you for anyone to mourn. I understand that you want closure, but doing this will spell certain death if you do it alone.”

“I can’t give up on them,” I whimpered. “Grunkle Stan spent 30 years trying to get Ford back from the multiverse, and I’m willing to do the same.”

“Is this really what you want to do?” he asked darkly. His voice sent a chill through me.

I didn’t reply. My vision had focused to the floor again, taking in the shape of the tips of my tennis shoes, tracing the curve of the dirtied white rubber soles as they wrapped around my foot. I shouldn’t have said anything to him at all. I was afraid that this was going to happen, and now it was happening and I had no way to dig myself out of the hole I’d made.

Without another word, Wirt rose from the bench, stretching before pulling down the hem of his sweater vest. I dared to look up at him, thinking that this was probably the last time I would see him. I messed up. There was no way he would want me near him after telling him that I was building a submarine out of salvaged alien technology to go exploring under the Bermuda Triangle for an extraterrestrial colony that may or may not have abducted my family, assuming that it even existed at all. Thinking about it so succinctly made me realize how crazy it all sounded. Wirt stood there, staring at the upside-down artwork before us, his hands settled loosely in his pockets.

“I want to see it,” he said quietly, turning to face me. His eyes looked down at me expressionlessly.

“What?”

“Your UFO-sub. I wanna see it.”

I was confused. He had just condemned me for making it, and now he wanted to see it. “Uh, sure... yeah...”

“Then get up and let’s go,” he spoke as he began to walk away from me. I scrambled to stand up and follow after. He wasn’t even bothering to look to see if I was behind him at all.

Tentatively I asked, “You know how to get to the Mystery Shack, right?”

“Yeah,” was his quick response as we headed out of the museum. It looked like it was preparing to close, as the sun was already starting to set in the sky. I had no idea that we’d been in there for that long, but it wasn’t too much of a surprise considering how the museum didn’t have any windows in it.

We each headed to our respective vehicles and drove out towards the Mystery Shack. All the while, I spent my time contemplating how I had just ruined a very important relationship. Was there any way for me to come back from this without having to scrap my plans? None of Wirt’s statements were different from anything I’d been told before, yet hearing it from his mouth hurt me far more than what anyone else had said to me. The opinions of people I’d known for a long time – people who I thought of as family – didn’t seem to matter as much, as though I knew saying whatever I wanted to wouldn’t damage our relationship. Wirt, though, was different. As much as I told myself that I’d known him for a long time and knew who he was as a person, I really didn’t know who he was at all. Each encounter with him brought out another facet of his personality that went against my expectations, and every reaction he made was beyond my scope of understanding. I was beginning to wonder if I was in love with the idea of Wirt and less in love with who Wirt actually was. There were dimensions to him that I felt like I could never fully comprehend even if I was given a lifetime to figure them out. For the first time in years, I was terrified that I had done irreparable damage to a relationship and I had no idea what I would do if this relationship disappeared as completely from my life as my great-uncles had.


	25. Chapter 25

I was at my wit’s end with Mason “Dipper” Pines. What in the world was he thinking?! He was dooming himself and he didn’t even realize it. Conspiracy theory nonsense aside, his plan to somehow take a submarine he built himself into the Atlantic Ocean to search for something that likely didn’t exist all for the sake of closure was utterly ludicrous. The fact that Mabel had insisted that he tell me all of this meant that she was also at her wit’s end. It must have been a cry for help, hoping that I could stop him from making a terrible and life-threatening mistake.

We both arrived at the Mystery Shack in short order, the shadows of the forest extending far along the ground as the sun left the last of her light before she vanished behind the mountains to spread her warmth to the other side of the world. I had not anticipated staying out so late with Dipper. Though I had earlier worried about my brother and his ability to manage my homestead without me, those thoughts did not resurface in this moment. I was focused keenly on Dipper and the foolishness he had just revealed to me.

I stepped out of my vehicle and looked at the familiar grounds that stood as the home of the Mystery Shack, Gravity Falls’s “world famous” tourist attraction. The establishment itself looked much as it did when I was younger, though it had had a recent paint job and the sign was no longer falling apart. The fact that it looked a little less dilapidated was comforting as it meant that it was being cared for even after all these years. As I admired its appearance, it seemed that the establishment was preparing to close for the evening, which forced me to hurry myself inside before Dipper freed himself from his truck. He called out something to me as I entered the gift shop that I ignored completely, the bell on the door ringing cheerfully upon my entry as an easy distraction to whatever it was that Dipper was trying to say to me. The interior of the Mystery Shack was similarly as nostalgic in how little it had changed through the years, though the inventory in the shop had been updated to include cell phone covers and fidget spinners. Otherwise, the building’s interior maintained its rustic façade of paneling along the walls and rows of wooden shelves with plastic trinkets and questionable objects to buy. The ever-popular “What Is The Mystery Shack?” bumper sticker was still on display and still didn’t have an address on it or any other explanation as to what the Mystery Shack could possibly be. Working the cash register was a teenage employee who grunted something similar to a hello as I wandered around, waiting for Dipper to show himself.

The bell on the door rang cheerfully again, and I watched as Dipper talked to the employee behind the counter. Whatever he said prompted the teen to get up, turn the Open sign to Closed, and walk through the door at the back labeled Employees Only. With the teenager now gone, Dipper waved me over to him and he pushed a sequence of digits into the vending machine against the wall.

I scoffed, “All that trouble just to get a snack?”

Dipper set the final number into the vending machine and an odd noise emanated from behind it, causing it to lurch forward. He pulled the vending machine out of the way to reveal a secret stairway behind the machine and I was dumbfounded. Was that always there?

Wordlessly, Dipper tugged my wrist and I followed him in, watching mutely as he pulled the vending machine closed behind us. From there, we walked down a long flight of ancient wooden stairs in the darkness, a lantern our only light until we reached a rusty utility elevator at the bottom of the stairs. It appeared that this basement was deeper underground than I had originally thought. Once inside the elevator, we went down to the deepest level which opened into a small room that looked like some kind of Cold War era control room. Large computer machinery whirred loudly along the walls and retro computer screens lit up with coded green text in the dim light that streamed down from the scant light fixtures overhead. There was dark glass and a large metal door separating us from something else beyond the control room, but the weak light from where we stood couldn’t penetrate that nearby darkness.

“Here it is,” Dipper said as he flipped a switch on what looked like the main control panel. Lights flashed on outside the blackened window, revealing a large chamber that must have been at least three stories high. The white fluorescent lighting in that chamber looked newer than the archaic machinery in the room we were in, which meant that he had modified that chamber for his needs. I stepped closer to the window above the main control panel, staring at a smooth metal object that looked unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life. It was sleek and gray, with a singular bulbous window revealing little to what could possibly be inside it. The shape of the object was recognizable to anyone who enjoyed watching old science fiction movies: It was clearly a UFO.

“That’s,” I coughed, shaking my head. “That’s not a submarine...”

Dipper opened the metal door that separated us from the object in the other room, guiding me into the large cavern where his UFO-submarine was housed, the exposed sediment giving the whole place a creepy super-villain hideout vibe. “It’s definitely a sub,” he reiterated, “but it still looks pretty extraterrestrial, doesn’t it? Grunkle Ford made his look more like something from Earth, but I liked the aesthetic of the original base, so I made some modifications to his modifications to make it look cool and outer space-y.”

“What am I looking at, exactly...?” I asked as I drew myself closer to the craft. It was suspended in the air by a hydraulic lift one would see at an automotive repair shop, which was the only thing detracting from its “cool and outer space-y” look. There was a small hatch opened at its base, revealing some exposed wiring and circuitry, which meant that Dipper had been working on it recently. Scattered around were various tables and large toolboxes flanking the area below the submarine, and a small desk set up with a modern computer seated on it that was situated near enough for whatever purpose Dipper intended it for. I thought his basement at his house was his true man cave, but I was evidently wrong. This was a literal man cave hidden deep underground. I couldn’t believe he was hiding something like this underneath the Mystery Shack...

“It’s a salvaged pod from the larger ship,” he explained. “I kept the shell of it and a lot of the other internal mechanisms, since I needed to modify it in a hurry. I was working on this before I moved here, so it’s been taking longer to finish than I thought it would.”

“Is this why you moved here?”

“Actually, no,” he replied with a laugh. “I just lucked out when my dream job moved here. I didn’t really intend on moving out here permanently, but the opportunity fell in my lap. I couldn’t pass it up.”

I hummed, walking around the ship-turned-sub, admiring its smooth curves and clean design. “It’s beautiful in its simplicity,” I mused as I rounded back. “This is what you expect to use to survive in the ocean?”

“Um, yeah,” he said sheepishly, keeping his gaze away from mine.

“You know I won’t let you do that, right?” I felt like that was obvious, but I wanted confirmation from him.

He nodded a little though his eyes were focused elsewhere, “I understand that, but I still want to do it.”

“But why?” I asked, my voice sounding more tired than I intended. “Why is it so important that it be _you_ who does it? I know you have hope that your great-uncles are alive out there, but is it worth risking your life like this? Don’t you care about anyone else’s feelings?”

I could hear his breath but he didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he continued to stare at the ground, as though the dirt would reveal the words he needed to say to please me.

“You’re just torturing yourself by doing something crazy like this,” I continued, not wanting silence to settle inside this expansive space. This secret basement already looked like the lair of a mad scientist, and this craft he was working on seemed entirely within the purview of a madman seeking to destroy the world. I doubted that he realized what this looked like to an outsider at all. “I know your intentions are good, but this is madness.”

“I know I can do it,” he mumbled, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

I shook my head, “I don’t doubt that you could, but have you even considered the practicality of doing something like this? How would you pitch this to your boss? There’s no way anyone would allow you to take off from work for an unknown amount of time just so you can play hero.” He visibly winced at this. It seemed like he hadn’t even considered that this kind of conversation needed to happen at all. “You just said that this job is your dream job, yet you seem willing to throw it away for the scant possibility that your uncles might be alive.”

“I-I’ll figure something out,” he was still searching the dirt flooring, seeking out the words that would make me happy. It was clear that he was panicking.

A heavy sigh exhaled from my lips and I stepped closer to him, no longer lingering near Dipper’s UFO-submarine hybrid. “You know this is nuts, right? Having an underground lair like this where you’re scavenging alien technology and using it to create hybrid machinery... It just screams ‘super villain’.”

“I can’t just give up, Wirt,” he said quietly, still avoiding my gaze.

Slowly I reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, “I’m not asking you to give up hope. You have three doctorates. Surely you can think of a more practical way of dealing with this issue than going out into the ocean alone in an extraterrestrial coffin. Maybe,” I pulled my hand away, thinking a little, “you could donate this thing to the coast guard and they can use it instead. I mean, that’s their job, right?”

His eyes darted to the side, looking at the spot where my hand had touched him, “I don’t know how I feel about letting the military have access to something like this...”

“Is it a weapon?” It didn’t look like it had any weapons on it, but maybe they were stealthily placed on the sleek vehicle somehow.

Dipper shook his head, “No, it was originally meant as a means for transporting prisoners before I scavenged it, so it doesn’t have weapons on it and I never intended to add weapons to it. But,” he inhaled a deep breath, “if the government gets their hands on it, then they’ll easily be able to tell it’s not from Earth. I don’t want to deal with men in black visiting here again.”

It was beginning to sound like Dipper Pines was infamous within the federal government, and I could understand why given where we stood. I looked around the chamber again, taking it in fully. If the government knew that he had a facility like this hidden deep underground filled with strange tech like this alien craft, there was no telling what would happen to him. Most likely, this wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg of objects hidden in this underground lair. I idly wondered what was hiding on the level that we didn’t stop at on the way down here, worry instantly filling me. I doubted it was anything as normal as a game room. “I’m willing to help you in any way I can, but you need to think seriously about what you’ve been doing here. Is what you’re doing really the right thing to do?”

He made no sound as he shuffled by me, heading towards the small desk that had the computer on it. Slowly he pulled the chair away from the desk and whirled it around to face me before he slumped himself down into it. He was being very careful not to look at me, averting his eyes as best he could to stare down at the sediment below our feet. I watched him quietly, feeling like I was scolding a child. “If I don’t try, then... who else will?”

I shrugged and walked over to him, resting myself against the edge of the small desk. “Isn’t there anyone you can trust to take the burden of this off your shoulders? You’re risking too much. I assume your friends and family aren’t willing to help you further because they have adult obligations, right?” A simple nod was his wordless reply. “Then what about someone in the weird conspiracy theory community? You must have some contacts there that you trust enough to do this for you...”

“Possibly,” he replied, though there was little conviction in his voice.

“Why don’t you put this mess on hold for a little while?” I asked gently, hoping that I had gotten through to him. I needed him to realize that this was lunacy. “I’m not asking you to give up, but merely... reevaluate your plans. Think about finding someone with ample time and resources and qualifications that would be more suited to this task. I know that you have the capacity to do it yourself, but you’re making everyone you love worry about you needlessly. You understand what I’m saying, right?”

A nod was his response again, as it had been for many of the things I’d said. He looked defeated, which didn’t make me feel great. Though his heart was in the right place, he was following a destructive path that seemed obvious to anyone outside of his head. To Dipper, this all made sense and was the noble and heroic thing he could do; meanwhile, for me and likely everyone else around him, this made no sense at all and would likely lead to his untimely and unfortunate demise. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t catch, but I didn’t press him for clarification. It was clear that what he had said wasn’t meant for me to hear. I watched him quietly as he continued to gaze at the floor while he sat hunched in the same way he had been in the museum. He looked so small and childlike, reminding me of when we were younger. A few long seconds fled by before I took my vision away from his slumped form and moved it back to the vehicle a few feet away. All this intelligence yet no common sense...


	26. Chapter 26

Wirt stood beside me for a long time, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t want to say anything. Everything he had said to me was painful and true. What was I thinking, doing all of this? When Mabel and Soos and Wendy had said practically the same things to me, it wasn’t enough to make me rethink my actions at all, yet hearing the same things being slung at me by Wirt wounded me. I was being an idiot and jeopardizing every relationship I had built up until this point. It’s why I’d spent so much time hiding it from everyone... except Soos, obviously. He was allowing me to do my business down in the basement of the Mystery Shack, despite his protestations that what I was doing was “not cool.” I didn’t care about what was cool or not cool, as long as it benefited me and my goal. Everyone who ever cared about me had cautioned me about doing this, calling it the wrong thing to do, yet I went behind their backs to do it anyway. I was a fool.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I finally said with a sigh. “I’d rather do this by myself, but...”

“No buts,” he said sharply. I could tell that he was getting tired. “You’ll research people who can do this for you. You don’t have to give them your sub if you don’t want to, but you have to find people who are qualified for this kind of expedition that you can fully trust.”

“I will,” I whined, taking a page from Mabel. He was sounding more parental than my actual parents.

“Good.” I could hear him shifting his position and I watched his shadow move in front of me. He crouched down to meet my gaze, my eyes having been fixed on the floor for most of our conversation. “I love you, Dipper. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.” His expression softened slightly, and for the first time since this conversation had begun, I felt like I could look him in the eyes without feeling overwhelmed by his intensity.

Weakly, I smiled and reached out a hand to touch his cheek. “I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say. I said that because in my mind I was still determined to continue my project even though I knew it would drive a wedge between us if he ever found out.

“It’s okay,” he said softly before pulling away from my touch and standing up. I would have been upset about this if I hadn’t heard the loud cracking of his joints as he stood. Age was inhibiting our tender moment. “What worries me, though, is that you’re apparently infamous. You’re not so far from being a super villain...”

“I’ve been wanted by the Time Force before, too,” I smirked up at him.

He was confused, which was a normal reaction to that. “Do I even want to know?”

I shrugged, “It’s getting late. You can stay at my place, if you want to, though... after all this, you probably just wanna go home, right?” I could feel my stomach rumbling hungrily. Our dinner plans had been completely forgotten during all of this.

“I’d rather go home,” he said decisively.

“Greg’s probably wondering what happened to you,” I said as I looked up at him. I tried to smile, but I felt it straining against my cheeks.

“I doubt it,” Wirt replied as he shifted his vision back to the submarine. “I still can’t believe you’ve been hiding this from me...”

My weak smile faded into nothingness as I hung my head again, “I didn’t want to tell you about it. It’s why I didn’t want to get back together with you.”

“What?” The sound was choked from him and I could see the movement of him quickly turning to face me again. “This is why you were so against labeling our relationship as anything? Because you knew I’d be upset about this?”

I shook my head, but he was absolutely right, “I-I was afraid that our relationship – a-any relationship – would get in the way of my plans.”

He charged forward and roared, “A relationship isn’t a weakness!” His hands clamped hard against my shoulders like vices, gripping the flesh beneath my t-shirt tightly, “What was the point of telling me how you felt if you were going to think of it as some kind of inconvenience to your ridiculous rescue plan?!”

It seemed like no matter what words I said, they would all be wrong. I thought he was upset before, but this was far worse. He was furious in a way I had never imagined. No longer was he the gentle Wirt I had known in my youth. Instead, standing before me was an angry adult who was rightfully upset by what I was saying. “It’s not like that,” I cried out, desperation filling my voice. “I don’t know why I told you everything. I don’t know why I’m telling you the truth. I-I just...” My voice was cracking like it had when I was a teenager, breaking like the glass I knew we were walking on.

Wirt’s hands dropped away and he let out a mirthless laugh, “That’s enough. I’m going home. You don’t need to worry about me getting in the way of your ‘plans’ or whatever.” With heavy footsteps he marched towards the metal door that led back into the main control room.

My mind immediately panicked, the word “no” echoing endlessly as it drowned out any other thoughts. My mouth said it, too, softly at first as I watched him walk away. Feebly I lifted myself from the chair I’d been sitting in and staggered as quickly as I could after him, “N-no, wait! Please!”

He paused as he reached the door, glancing back at me with disappointment filling his eyes. I stopped cold in my tracks, paralyzed by his gaze. “You were right,” he spoke in a low, measured tone as he opened the door. “You aren’t ready for a relationship right now.” With those words, he walked through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

I stood there slack-jawed briefly before my body willed itself forward, opening the door just in time to see Wirt enter the elevator and be lifted back towards ground level. No words could fall from my lips that would have been appropriate for me to say in that moment, and all I could do was make choked noises as I watched the elevator’s floor indicator stop at the top. The one thing I didn’t want to happen had happened. Every nightmare scenario I’d put together in my brain hadn’t prepared me for reality. Wirt’s warm words from a couple months ago rang at the back of my mind deftly, “Loving you was the best thing to ever happen to me,” and I understood now that they were a mirror of my own feelings. Loving Wirt was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I’d just ruined it by being the biggest idiot in the multiverse. I didn’t want to admit that there was likely no possibility of coming back from this debacle, so I refrained from letting that thought worm its way into my mind.

With the elevator now free and back on the control room level, I got into it and prayed that I would make it to the top before Wirt was gone for good. I raced up the stairs and shoved the vending machine open to reveal a dark and empty gift shop. Outside the windows I could see headlights being turned on and hear an engine growling. I rushed out of the gift shop door to watch the headlights tear away from the Mystery Shack, leaving me entirely alone under the shadow of the old tourist trap. The full moon laughed at me from the starry backdrop of the sky, as though he knew I was an absolute idiot.

 _He_ , I thought, shaking my head. Wirt’s influence had infected me so much in such a short amount of time.

My gaze trained towards the moon and I let out a long breath that turned into pathetic laughter. I dug my keys out from my pocket and walked to my truck, unlocking it and sitting inside silently. Moonlight shined brightly in through the windshield. I lowered the brim of my hat over my eyes, shielding myself from the light. Shielding the moon’s gaze from seeing my devastation.

I stayed like that for a long time until I felt like I needed to leave.

The drive home was quiet. No music. No radio. There was no sound but the hum of my engine and the rush of the wind. I was empty.


	27. Chapter 27

“But that’s really cool, don’t you think?” Greg mused over breakfast. It had been a week since the unfortunate incident with Dipper. I needed that much time to get my thoughts in order about the whole ordeal, which is why I had only just now mentioned any of it to Greg. He had noticed earlier that my mood was changed when I had gotten home so late that Saturday evening, but hadn’t pressed me further. I almost wished that he had nagged me about it instead of letting me wallow in the aftermath of my emotions for a week. It wasn’t like Greg to keep me at such a distance, and I wondered if it was because our dynamic had shifted in the years after I’d moved out here. He knew I needed the distance, and he was willing to maintain it even if the distance forced my thoughts to slowly devour my sanity.

Dipper had been quiet that whole week, knowing that he had screwed up, and I was quite glad that he stayed silent. If I had heard anything from him, then I would likely have blocked his number out of some need to feel like I’d won, despite this not being a situation where winning was an option. Part of me truthfully felt awful about lashing out at him, but I also knew that if Dipper hadn’t gotten me to that point, he likely still wouldn’t have gotten it through his head that he was hurting the people he loved with his selfish attempt at being heroic.

“How is any of this cool?” I argued, biting into a slice of toast. I was seated facing the back door, the summer sun having risen neatly over the horizon to gleam golden light across the yard, painting everything in warmth. The only impediment to the view was Greg and his sloppy eating style as he inhaled his own slice of toast and gulped down his orange juice.

“Firstly, we now know that aliens are real,” he replied gleefully after swallowing, “and secondly, you learned that Dipper’s so smart that he can make rocket ships and turn UFOs into submarines!”

“I mean, yes, that’s all objectively cool, but he basically told me that being in a relationship with me was a liability,” I rebuffed as I contemplated whether or not I wanted a sip of my orange juice.

“Did he really, though?” Greg hummed as he shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth.

“Yes?!” I threw my arms in the air, “He said that he didn’t want relationships getting in the way of his ‘plans’ or whatever. That means he sees relationships of any kind as an inconvenience.”

“But he didn’t say that specifically about you, though, right?” He was being far too calm and I didn’t like it.

“Well, no,” I said slowly, adding a little more pepper to my eggs after deciding not to take a sip of orange juice, “but the implication was there.”

“I feel like,” he spoke between chewing, “he wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of calling you and talking to you and spending time with you if he was just going to say that being with you is bad and that he doesn’t wanna date you. I mean... he was the one who confessed first, right?”

I sighed tiredly, “I don’t think there’s hidden meaning in that. I think he just got nostalgic and wanted to try getting back in touch.” _Although_ , I thought idly, _he did go through a lot of trouble to find me at all_. Our first phone call included a conversation about the great lengths he’d gone through to contact me. What was the point of going through all of that if he was just going to end up pushing me away? He was even aware of the fact that this would push me away, it seemed, yet he still did it.

Greg stopped eating, his voice growing small, “But you still love him, right?”

That made my thoughts pause as my gaze shifted out towards the morning sun beyond Greg’s shoulder. I had asked myself that a lot over the last week. As much as what Dipper was doing seemed inexplicable and dangerous to me, it didn’t make me hate him. It was frustrating, of course, yet I felt like if I could sincerely believe that he was going to stop his crazy quest to play hero, then I would likely forgive him. My heart still sang that I was desperately in love with him, even if he exhausted me with his childish foibles. “Yeah,” I halfway laughed in disbelief at my own words, “I do still love him.”

“I don’t know what true love is supposed to be like,” Greg said as he finished his plate of food, “but I think it’s something that can overcome a problem like this. It doesn’t seem like you’re mad at him, are you?”

I sucked in a slow breath, “No, I’m not mad at him. At least, I don’t _think_ that I’m mad at him... though I did yell at him before I left.”

“Oh,” Greg intonated as he stared at his empty plate, “then maybe you really _were_ mad at him.”

“In that moment, yes,” I sighed. “Now that I’ve had time to think about everything, I still feel like what he’s been doing in secret is beyond crazy, but none of that was what upset me. What upset me was his flippant attitude regarding relationships of any kind. He’s not just putting his relationship with me in jeopardy, but even his relationship with his sister.”

“Maybe that’s why Mabel’s been acting weird when I ask her about Dipper lately,” he mumbled.

“So he was hiding it from her, too,” I said quietly. He couldn’t even trust his own twin sister to know what he was doing. They were supposed to be the model siblings who were the greatest friends, yet he still hid this nonsense from Mabel. As much as I didn’t want to believe that, it felt in line with what I had learned of his personality recently.

“Do you think you’ll talk to Dipper soon?”

I winced, “Probably, though I’m not sure when or how. I feel like texting him would be the first step, but it’s also incredibly impersonal... but calling him could be intimidating, and I don’t know how I’ll feel once I hear his voice again.” I groaned, “This is so dumb!”

“I say text first and call if he’s okay with it,” Greg hummed. “The sooner you two make up, the sooner I can play DD&MD with you guys!”

Another groan seeped from my mouth. I forgot that we were supposed to be playing that stupid game next weekend! I doubted that things would be sufficiently patched up by then, but I could at least try to make it so that we could have our little game while not letting the atmosphere be too awkward or heavy for Greg. “Fine, I’ll text him after we clean this up. Would that make you happy?”

“Yes!” Even when the conversation was this dire, he still managed to keep himself as cheerful as possible for my sake. I appreciated it.

We both shared in the cleanup after breakfast, and eventually Greg wandered back into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him to give me privacy. The thought of not texting Dipper and then later telling Greg that I did had crossed my mind, but I didn’t like the idea of lying to him. I had had enough of lies for a while.

It took a long time for me to finally settle on a message to send to Dipper. Should it be friendly and simple? Should it be serious and long? I typed it out and deleted it more times than I can remember before settling on this: “I’m sorry for what I said last week. I’m not mad at you anymore. Can we please talk?” I sat in my arm chair and placed the phone on the accent table beside it. All I could do now was wait for his reply.

In the meantime, I picked up a book that I had been reading recently, pulling the marker from it and doing a little light reading. I didn’t want the anxiety of waiting for Dipper’s reply to agonize me and I had hoped that this would make me less nervous. I’m sure that when I left him behind in that brightly lit cavernous chamber, he must have thought that was the last he would hear from me or see of me. I didn’t mean for it to seem so final. Certainly I was upset in that moment, but I hadn’t thought that I was ending things. After I replayed my words and actions in a calmer state of mind, I could only conclude that it had seemed that way to him, that I was ending everything just when it had started. However, when I had said that I didn’t know what I would do if anything happened to him... that still felt true to me. As much as I wanted to believe that I would be okay if he disappeared while on his ridiculous rescue mission, that wasn’t the truth at all. Just as when I left him ages ago, my heart would still be devastated if he wasn’t there anymore. I had spent so many years wistfully thinking of him, keeping his memory alive in my heart as though knowledge of him fading from me would mean the end of something precious to me. If I had knowledge that he was gone forever, then I doubted that anything would be able to fill the hole he would leave behind in my heart.

An hour later a text message pulled my attention away from my book. “I’m sorry, too,” was the simple reply before the phone rang alive. He was calling right that moment.

Before the second ring, I cautiously answered the phone, “Dipper?”

“Hi, Wirt,” his voice was strained and frail. Had he been crying? He didn’t seem like the type to cry...

“Are you okay?” Now I was worried. Had I made him cry? Had he been crying all week? What kind of heartless person had I become to make someone I love suffer so supremely without my knowledge!

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied and it was clearly a lie as his voice sounded raw.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, as though getting the words out faster would make him feel better faster.

He coughed out a laugh, “Wirt, it’s okay. I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting you to pick up so fast. Lemme go outside. These paint fumes are really getting to me.”

 _Paint fumes_? “Yes, okay, I can wait,” I replied robotically, trying to figure out what he was painting. Was he painting the walls in one of the bedrooms of his house?

A few seconds later and I could hear the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, indicating that he was outside in the warm summer sunshine. “That’s much better! Sorry about that. I’ve been doing a little work on the house this week.”

I nodded, “That’s good... I’m still sorry, though...”

“You shouldn’t be the one apologizing,” he said swiftly. “I’m the moron. I’ve been ignoring everyone’s warnings and being selfish. I even hid what I was doing from Mabel.”

Greg’s assumption was right. Mabel must have found out that Dipper was keeping this information from her, which was likely why she thought to convince Dipper to tell me everything. “Why would you keep that from her? Isn’t she your partner in crime?” A thought slipped by about how they might be partners in literal crime, too, if Dipper’s infamy with the federal government was anything to go by.

“When I first told her what I was doing, I thought she would be all for it, like in the past,” he said carefully, pulling the memory of this from his mind, “but instead she told me it was stupid and that I’d get myself killed. I tried so hard to convince her that if she helped me, it would be the ultimate adventure, but she told me that doing it would be reckless and impossible for both of us. Even when I proposed it to Soos and Wendy, they refused due to life and family obligations.”

When Dipper told me about the adventures they had when they were younger, it was back when they were children and teenagers. If I remember Soos correctly, he was the only adult involved in the twins’ lives who wasn’t related by blood. I remembered he was in a serious relationship with a woman at the time... Melody, I think her name was. If that relationship developed further, then they were likely married and had kids by now. Wendy was an older teen when I first met her, and she likely was in the same situation as Soos nowadays, with family and work obligations. I wasn’t sure about Mabel’s personal or professional life, other than knowing that she had a day job that afforded her little freedom when it came to fashion, but maintaining steady employment meant that there was no way she could freely gallivant in the Atlantic Ocean in a modified UFO to find proof of extraterrestrial life on the ocean floor. The obligations of adulthood even stood in Dipper’s way, though he seemed to willfully ignore this fact entirely, just as he’d said that skeptics can willfully ignore evidence and twist it to their own benefit. That’s exactly what he had been doing for nearly two years, and it seemed like he was finally coming to understand that.

“You should have realized earlier that they were right,” I said quietly, shaking my head.

“I know,” he said bitterly, “but I wanted to believe I could do it, even if I had to do it myself.”

“Even if it meant destroying your relationships with family and friends?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” he sighed. “I was wrong this whole time... I’m not scrapping my submarine project, but I won’t be using it to search for my grunkles. I contacted a ufologist I know extremely well in the community. I respect his work and his integrity, so I definitely trust him. He’s licensed to do deep sea diving, among other oceanographic stuff, and has other qualifications that make him perfect for this kind of mission. I explained everything to him, within reason, and he said that he’ll form a team and go out there once hurricane season is over. Apparently he’s wanted an excuse to explore the Bermuda Triangle for a while now.”

“That’s good,” I said with a smile. He really was trying his best, and this was what he should have done from the beginning. Instead of putting his career and life on the line, he was now letting an expert who knows what he’s doing handle it for him. “Will he need to be compensated for his efforts?”

“No,” Dipper chuckled, “he’s going to do it for free. He’s an absolute nut, but he’s a good man. If anyone can find my grunkles, it’ll be him. That’s how much confidence I have in him.”

“I’m glad,” I said, sighing in relief. “So when is hurricane season over?”

“November, I think,” he hummed. “I was such an idiot that I actually thought going in August was a good idea! That’s like the middle of hurricane season!”

“You wanted to find your uncles for your birthday, didn’t you?”

Again he let free a laugh, though this one was lighter, “Yeah. I was hoping I could surprise Mabel, but... I guess the better gift is me being alive for our birthday.”

“I would agree with that,” I laughed a little. “I’m just glad that you’ve finally come to your senses.”

“Watching you leave like that,” he said quietly, “was what drove it home. Nothing you said was different from what anyone else had said, but... if you hadn’t left like that, then I probably would’ve continued on like I had been.”

I blinked a little at that. This meant that if I hadn’t yelled at him or implied that our relationship was over, then he would still have gone on his deadly journey alone. “Fear of me exiting your life was the only reason you stopped? You didn’t even consider the feelings of your sister or your friends? Did you even bother to tell your parents at all? I had no idea that you were so selfish.”

“I know I messed up,” he said, sincerity bleeding into his voice, “but I’ll do better now. I was stupid and wanted to prove myself to everyone without thinking about the consequences.”

“You lied to your sister and to me,” I spoke in as serious a tone I could muster. “It will take more than an apology and an admission of fault to fix the damage you’ve done.”

“Mabel knows now. She figured it out on her own.” He paused to take in a sharp breath. “I talked to her the morning after and she confirmed that the reason she wanted me to tell you was because she hoped that you’d be able to knock sense into me. I told her it worked, but at the cost of our relationship.”

“You say that like our relationship is dead,” I hummed.

There was an inquisitive quality to his voice when he asked, “Isn’t it, though?” It was as if he had come to the conclusion that our relationship was damaged beyond repair. The note of shock in his voice was that of someone who thought all hope had been lost. It appeared that I truly had made it seem like our relationship was finished for good. He must have thought me cruel for trying to contact him, likely prepared for me to tell him that I never wanted to see or talk to him again, which was entirely not the case.

“It’s not,” I said gently. “It’s wounded, but not dead. Our relationship has only just restarted, after all, and the haze of our old memories is settling to form new ones as we learn about each other now that we’ve found each other again. Learning to love faults is important to loving a person in their totality.”

He spoke softly, “So... you still want to be my boyfriend? Is that what all of that means?”

Hearing that word was a bit surprising to me. It had been a long time since anyone had called me their boyfriend, and the word sounded so strange to my ears. I liked hearing it come from his mouth, though. It was a word that I hadn’t expected him to volley at me with such ease, given how he was previously so adverse to the idea of dating at all. I laughed lightly, “Yes, I still want to be your boyfriend.”

He laughed as well, albeit nervously, “I’m glad that I didn’t scare you off...”

“You’re still in hot water,” I said quickly. Maybe a bit too quickly, as I could hear him make a noise not unlike a gasp on his end, but I needed to make sure the topic didn’t stray too far from the reason for this conversation. “We can’t have anymore secrets like that between us. You understand that, right?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. It seemed like he understood, but without visual confirmation, I couldn’t be certain. I just had to trust for the moment that he indeed understood what I meant.

I sighed softly, “After our game next week, I want to see what else you’re hiding in the Mystery Shack.”

“I’m not hiding anything else,” he choked out quickly.

“That elevator skipped a floor,” I exhaled. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

“N-none of that stuff is mine,” he whimpered. “That’s all Grunkle Ford’s things – artifacts from long ago! I mean, I-I can show you it, if you want, but... there’s a lot in there, and I don’t know what most of it is.”

“I still want to see it,” I insisted. He may not have believed that what was in that room was his secret, but I fully believed so. If he was really in such trouble with the government, then it meant that there were facets to him that I wasn’t entirely privy to yet, and I needed him to tell me what all everything was, regardless of if those things were his or not. Whatever his great-uncle was up to seemed to bleed into Dipper in a way I didn’t like. The secrets contained within that old tourist trap were his now, as he clearly inherited those secrets from his great-uncles. The consequences of those secrets were now his to endure, and if I was going to go through with this relationship with him, I needed to know what I was getting myself into. I loved this man, I knew that completely, but all of these secrets were overwhelming in a way that I had never anticipated.

There was an eerie silence on his end that unnerved me. It was becoming clear that he had no intention of sharing whatever was in that level with me, and I could only imagine that he was mulling it over in his mind. Was it truly advantageous for him to show me whatever dark secrets and strange artifacts existed within that place? I heard him take in a sharp breath before he spoke, “I’ll show you both. You and Greg both have a right to know now, I think...”

“Thank you,” I said slowly. I could hear a bit of reluctance in his voice, but at least he knew that it was the right thing to do. “You don’t really need to show Greg anything, though,” I chuckled lightly, hoping to lift the mood a little.

“Nah, he should probably see it, too,” he sighed. “You told him everything, right?”

“I didn’t really have much of a choice,” I shrugged. “I was acting strange, so he was bound to notice. It’s hard to hide something like that when we’re living together.”

“It means you two really do have a good relationship,” he laughed lightly.

Our conversation shifted awkwardly into catching up with what had happened during the week as an attempt to make things feel less strained. It worked, somewhat, but there was still a dark pall shadowing our rapport. The call didn’t last too much longer after this, and ended with another confirmation that we were indeed going to be playing that silly tabletop game next weekend. As we each hung up, I could still feel a heavy weight on my mind. I wanted everything to work out; that’s what I had wanted for years, pining and dreaming of this man as though he was an illusion conjured only for me. The illusion was real, though, and reality was hardening the edges of the blurred frame of my memory. Dipper was a flawed human, just as all humans are, and though he was a light for me, there was the danger that Icarus knew as he flew too close to the sun in the sky: If you fly too close, your wings will melt away. It felt like that for me at that time; I was flying close to the sun, feeling her fire and heat lapping at my wax wings. Would this tale end in tragedy for me, or would I survive my journey and find safety on the other side? Time and patience were all I could afford myself back then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure if I should use MUFON's official stylized spelling of "UFOlogist" or the layman's version of "ufologist," but I figured since this was Wirt's chapter, he likely would use the more lay style of spelling the term, which is with all the letters in lower case. I spent a lot of time vacillating between both ways, though. It just looks so weird to me in lower case...


	28. Chapter 28

I hadn’t seen Greg since he was a kid. Back then, he was small and pudgy with round features and a sunny, goofy personality. Talking to him over the phone a few times, including for the interview, his voice was a lot deeper than I thought it would be, but that was to be expected considering he was fully grown now. Seeing him in person, though, made me squint trying to figure out just how he and Wirt were related at all. They didn’t look related beyond having similar hair and eye colors. Wirt was thin with sharp angles accenting his features, while Greg had more curves and heft to his form. Wirt was like an elongated rectangle while he brother was more elliptical. It was almost comical how different the two looked and acted, with Greg boisterously walking into my home and excitedly taking in everything, while Wirt was subdued and calm. I couldn’t tell if Wirt’s demeanor was related to what happened between us or if it was just that he was so much calmer than Greg. I tried not to think too much about that, though. We had a game to play.

As I’d anticipated, Greg’s inclusion was like dropping a tornado into it. He made a preposterous character (an orc rogue) and was somehow making it work despite how ridiculous it was. This afforded me ample opportunity to use my GMing skills and make up encounters on the fly, as he was very good at avoiding the main quest that I’d originally planned for them. Wirt took it all in stride as well. At the beginning, he seemed to be annoyed at Greg’s antics, trying to push him into making more logical choices in how to play, but after I kept allowing Greg his whims, Wirt played along and I could see him loosening up as a result. My plans had been completely derailed by Greg’s presence, but it didn’t hamper the fun or the adventure in the least. Having Greg’s unpredictable nature inserted into the game was refreshing and made things much more exciting, just as I had hoped it would. My fears of this game feeling strained melted away as we neared the end of the session, all three of us laughing and having a great time together. Whatever worries I’d had before dissipated as soon as we got into the game.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t last. The session ended after a hard-fought battle with a group of goblin assassins, leaving our heroes in the heart of a dark swamp where they setup camp for the evening, treating their wounds and hoping to rest for a moment. With our game now over for the evening, Wirt’s expression was slowly morphing back as he remembered everything from a couple weeks ago. I did my best to ignore this change in his mood, busying myself with clearing away the minis on the table and stacking some of the tiles to put them back in the box where they came from.

“So when do you want to go to the Mystery Shack?” He asked it calmly as he placed his dice and notebook into his bag.

I sighed, “It’s almost 7 now, so we can head over once I’m done cleaning up the food mess.”

“We’re really going over there?” Greg asked in disbelief.

“As far as I know, yeah,” I grumbled as I cleared away more clutter. “I let Soos know we were coming this time, so I’ll make sure to text him before we leave so he can clear out the gift shop for us.”

“Who all knows about the secret lab in the basement?” Wirt interrogated further.

I shrugged as I tossed trash into the trash can, “Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, me, Mabel, Soos, Wendy... I think Soos told Melody... Beyond that, there are a handful of other people, too, other than you guys, but I think everyone else thinks it’s been closed up for years. It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s definitely not something we openly tell people about.”

“That’s kinda cool though,” Greg exclaimed. “I bet you guys do, like, alien autopsies down there and stuff!”

I shook my head, heading to the GM’s side of the table and sitting back down in my chair. “That’s not what it was originally for,” I explained. “Ford originally was using that space to create—” I stopped abruptly. Did I really want to tell them everything that happened the summer before we met? I know I had mentioned a few things in passing, but I never did tell them the whole story. It was doubtful that they’d believe it anyway, but I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to tell them all of it.

Wirt frowned deeply, “Come on, Dipper. We’re wasting time. Why don’t you tell us the whole story on the way?”

“On the way?” I was confused. Was I driving them to the Shack, or were they driving me?

Greg giggled, “Oh boy, I call shotgun!”

“Get up,” Wirt said as he walked over to where I sat. He grabbed my wrist firmly and tugged, drawing me up to my feet. “You’ll be riding in the back of my car and telling us all your weird secrets.” I guess they were going to drive me over there.

In the time it took for us to get out into the driveway and into Wirt’s car, I sent out a quick text to Soos, alerting him that we were coming over. The car ride over consisted mainly of me recalling the events that led up to Weirdmageddon, trying my best to summarize everything without overwhelming the two brothers with too much unnecessary information. Greg seemed enthusiastic about the story, while Wirt said very little, focusing on driving more than talking. I wondered what was going through his mind then. He had already made it perfectly clear that conspiracy theories were something he didn’t like, but I lived through many real conspiracies and was proof that sometimes truth was stranger than fiction. The events of Weirdmageddon were something that one needed to experience in order to fully appreciate. It felt odd explaining something as big as Weirdmageddon into a concise summary, but there was no other way to do it. The details I left on the floor I could have easily plugged, saying “you can hear more on the podcast,” but I knew that neither would want to wade through all of that. Greg’s attention span was too short and Wirt’s patience with that kind of nonsense was too little.

We pulled into the deserted parking lot of the Mystery Shack. The gift shop’s sign was placed in the Closed position and the lights were all off, making it seem far too eerie for this early in the evening on a Saturday. Thankfully, the lights of the house portion of the Shack were still on and likely bustling with activity now that those living there had a few extra hours of freedom due to the tourist trap’s early closure. We all exited the car and crossed the dusty parking lot, entering the gift shop to the jingle of the bell on the door. I entered the code into the vending machine and I could hear Greg gasp in excitement as the vending machine moved to reveal the passageway heading to the deepest part of the Shack. We took the elevator to the floor I had promised to show Wirt, opening it up to reveal what I hadn’t shown him before: A dark room with ancient machinery that was cluttered with strange artifacts and odd tapestries. It was a room I seldom touched myself, but Ford had frequented it the most as it was his personal space. Each brother took their time to inspect everything in the room, Wirt quietly gazing at various curiosities while Greg would point to an object, ask me what it was, and when I didn’t have a sufficient answer to his inquiry, he would move on to the next object that caught his eye. While they investigated the room, I stared up at the torn tapestries and defaced curios depicting Bill Cipher that lined the walls and shelves of the room. He had never gotten rid of those things, even after being tricked by that demon. I wondered if the infinity-sided die was somewhere in here, locked away in a cabinet that I had no key to unlock. This place brought back a lot of memories I didn’t enjoy.

“All of this belongs to your great-uncle?” Wirt asked, drawing my attention away from my own thoughts.

“Yeah, that’s why I don’t really know what a lot of it is,” I replied with a soft chuckle.

“It’s all pretty cool,” Greg mused as he walked over to where I stood. “But why are there so many damaged things in here?”

“I was wondering that myself,” Wirt hummed as he stared up at one of the larger tapestries. “These tapestries kind of remind me of the imagery we saw at the museum.”

“Like I said in the car,” I sighed as I walked over to a dusty old chair in the corner of the room and carefully sat down on it, “Ford had been used by Bill and he became obsessed with this false muse who was using him for dark purposes. A lot of the stuff here is from that time, and it’s all damaged because... well, I told you what happened.”

“You did, as unbelievable as it is,” Wirt said as he continued to look at various items quietly.

“Hey, can I see the UFO-sub now?” Greg cried out. There was a big grin on his face and his eyes were sparkling from anticipation.

“Sure, if that’s okay with you, Wirt,” I replied, glancing over to his older brother.

Wirt shrugged, “You two can go on without me. I want to look around here a little more.”

I couldn’t fathom why he would want to stay in this dusty old room containing secrets that none of us could ever understand completely. A frown crossed my lips before I turned to Greg and said, “Why don’t you go on by yourself. Just flip the big switch on the main control panel and it’ll turn on all the lights. The door should be unlocked. If not, just come back up here and I’ll give you the key, okay?”

Greg’s mouth worked into strange shapes before he nodded slightly, “Okay, but you guys better come down soon.”

“And don’t touch anything on the sub,” Wirt said quickly.

Greg saluted and grinned, “Yes, sir! I won’t touch nuthin’!”

Wirt sighed, “That’s a double negative, but I’ll take your word anyway.”

I laughed lightly and waved Greg on, which he took as all the motivation he needed to hop into the elevator and ride it down to the bottom of the basement. My eyes stayed focused on the elevator doors for just a moment longer before drawing my attention to Wirt. He was still strolling slowly from object to object, quietly judging everything he saw. I could tell by his expression that he didn’t like this place, but the determination in his eyes meant that he was intent on taking in everything and viewing these items as part of the whole of my secrets. From my vantage point on the chair, I could take in the whole of the room. Behind me was Ford’s writing desk, dust covering it like it did everything else in this room. I hadn’t touched this place since my uncles had disappeared and I had no intention of doing so, but here I was anyway despite how much I didn’t want to be here disturbing the space.

“What is this place really?” Wirt asked as he wandered towards me, dragging another chair over to join me. “Do you really not know anything about this room?”

I shook my head, “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know much about this place. This was where Ford did a lot of his research before being pulled into that portal, and I’ve rarely been in this room. This is maybe my fifth or sixth time being in here. Whatever secrets are in this room aren’t related to me at all; they were here long before I was even born.”

Wirt frowned deeply, “I see.”

“If, um,” I stammered quickly, “i-if you have questions about anything, I can do my best to answer. Like, uh...” I looked about the room and landed my eyes on a big computer console, “Like that!” I motioned to it and Wirt looked at what I indicated, “That’s a device that can scan your mind, visualizing your thoughts and bioeletrically encrypting them. It doesn’t work anymore, but that’s what it was before it, uh, broke.” He didn’t need to know any further details about that.

“I see,” he repeated, nodding. We both went quiet after that, and I could feel an awkward tension between us. I knew coming here would be pointless.

While Wirt’s eyes continued to scan the room, I focused my vision on him, taking him in anew now that our emotions had died down from a couple weeks ago. Outwardly he was the same, but I was now seeing just how serious and pensive he was. I hadn’t noticed before that he was like this. I still was envisioning him as that thoughtful dreaming poet from our golden summer days, but it seemed that age had hardened him to reality. Though his words still slipped flowery language from time to time, he was reserved in how he expressed himself, which is why I was so shocked when he lashed out at me. I remembered him being calm and gentle, but now I wondered if that was just a façade for his summer lover.

When the silence became too great, I finally opened my mouth and asked, “What about you?”

This snapped his attention to me and he quirked a brow up curiously, “What about me?”

“I’m sure you have secrets,” I said quietly. “Obviously, when the Pines family has secrets, we have big secrets like this, but what about you?”

He righted his position in the dusty chair he was still seated in, his brow furrowing as he watched me. “I certainly don’t have secrets like this,” he laughed humorlessly.

“Yes, but... you must have something, too.” I folded my arms over my chest, relaxing into my own chair. “This isn’t a one way street. You know my big secret and you even know my unintentional secrets, but what about _your_ secrets?”

He mirrored my position, folding his arms over his chest as he stared up at the dirty ceiling above us. “I’m not sure I would have anything that could top this, but I’ve already told you a lot about my life. You know practically everything.”

I shook my head, “I don’t know too much about your family, other than you don’t really get along with them.”

He stiffed in his seat, darting his eyes back down to glare at me, “I don’t feel comfortable enough with you right now to tell you any of that.”

“That’s fair,” I shrugged, “but I hope you’ll tell me it someday. I told you about all this, after all.”

His eyes fell down to the floor, a sharp exhale of breath fleeing his nostrils. “I will... someday.”

I nodded slightly, drawing my attention back to the room we sat in, wondering if Greg was doing okay down with the submarine. There’s not much he could do to destroy it, considering the controls were offline and the material the vessel was made of was practically indestructible. My thoughts then strayed to the objects in the room and I felt a tug at my heart. I missed my great-uncles. I missed them so much and it was killing me to be in this room. It felt like a sacred space that I shouldn’t enter without permission from Grunkle Ford, and with him no longer around for the time being, it felt like I was violating the space by being here at all. This wasn’t my room. My gaze fell to the scuffed wooden floor, a frown drawing across my lips. There was a choked sensation in my throat as I thought about my great-uncles, not knowing if they were okay out there or even if they were alive. I unfolded my arms and leaned forward in the chair, my elbows digging into my thighs as I rested my chin in my hands. This silence was slow suffering.


	29. Chapter 29

I had no expectations for whatever this mysterious room was, but now that I was in it, it was beyond my comprehension. Dipper had been right when he said that it wasn’t his room and these weren’t his secrets. Whatever was in this room felt ancient and out of time, much as the control room below our feet did. These were artifacts of someone who wasn’t Dipper, and the scent of rotting books and decaying tapestries was pungent. I knew that his great-uncle Ford was eccentric, but this was far too much. It was truly the den of a genius madman. The tapestries on the walls and the imagery surrounding us screamed of the worship of a false god, and I doubted Dipper even realized that that was what it looked like. From the story that Dipper had told us, his uncle had formed a pact with a demon in exchange for knowledge, worshiped this creature in the hope to obtain the answers to all of his questions, and was inevitably betrayed by that vile monstrosity. He had made a Faustian bargain and it ended as well as one would have thought.

This subject of secrets, though, made me uneasy, especially when it was directed at me. I had secrets, of course, but nothing as outlandish as having a secret lair with alien technology in it or a room of artifacts dedicated to a demonic entity. My secrets were mundane by comparison. At least, in my head they were. My family problems were a secret for now simply because I hated dwelling on those problems. They weren’t so much a secret, even; it was a string of complications that I didn’t have the willingness to share with him yet. He could easily probe Greg if he wanted to learn that information. Dipper’s secrets were flashy and strange, while mine were quiet and ordinary.

By now he must have realized just how much I tried to separate myself from the outlandish and extraordinary. Ever since my experience in the Unknown and the ridicule I received from telling my tale, no one believing a word I said, it became clear to me that accepting anything that was paranormal or supernatural would only make me an outcast to everyone. My sexuality already had driven a wedge between myself and people I loved, and having this paranormal experience looming over my head so brightly would only make me more of a target. I never wanted to have that experience; I just wanted to be normal and live my life as normally as possible, becoming an unassuming person among the herds of unassuming people in the world. As I grew older, I succeeded in that regard. No one suspected that I had had a fantastical near-death experience. No one suspected that I had met cryptids in the forests of Gravity Falls one summer. No one suspected that I was in any way different from any other man my age. I scoffed at the idea of ghosts. I turned my nose up at the possibility of alien life that wasn’t an interstellar bacterium. I laughed at the notion that monsters lived in the woods. I turned myself into a skeptic to survive in a world of skeptics, and I grew to find myself doubting my own experiences as well. I was certain that Dipper noticed this by now. I had convinced myself that what I had seen in the woods with him were figments of my imagination. I had lied to myself for years in order to cope with my experience in the Unknown. Lately, though, it was becoming apparent that I had to come to terms with the idea that everything I had spent years trying to pass off as fantasy and imagination was all real and that I needed to finally accept that as my absolute truth.

In the silence that permeated the dense air around us, I could hear my heartbeat thumping against my eardrums. He wanted a secret, and there was one thing I had yet to tell him that wasn’t related to my family. “There’s something Greg and I didn’t mention in our interview,” I said quietly as I lifted my eyes to look at him, my voice breaking that deafening silence.

Dipper’s focus had shifted to the dusty floor, but now his gaze lifted to meet mine though his eyes were hidden behind the glint of his glasses. “So... you _do_ have a secret?” There was no mocking to his tone, only curiosity.

I nodded and shifted my position in the chair. It was old and wooden and incredibly uncomfortable, which made me somewhat regret sitting in it at all. “Ever since we came back, we’ve felt a desire to return to the Unknown. It’s like... a pull... At the back of my mind, I’ve thought perhaps that we’ll ultimately go back there when we die, returning to our wandering in the Unknown and becoming part of the unfinished stories that populate it.”

“And you both feel it?” He sat up in his seat, trying to assume a more relaxed pose as he listened to me.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “At first when Greg brought it up, back when we were younger, I tried to reassure him that it would go away with time. Although,” I chuckled, “it wasn’t so much to reassure him as it was to reassure me. He’s always seemed fine with that feeling tugging at his soul, keeping him yearning to go back to that place. I’ve never liked the sensation. I accept it now, though. It’s always there thrumming against my mind when I’m alone without a distraction.”

“I’ve heard about certain places doing that to people,” Dipper hummed as he searched his vast memory of the strange for an example. “I remember hearing that people who’ve had experiences at the Sallie House come away with a feeling of needing to return, even if their experience was negative. The Sallie House is known for housing many active spirits and even demonic activity, complete with tales of a former tenant having done satanic rituals in the basement.”

I snorted, “Why would anyone want to go there in the first place? It sounds terrible!”

“I know,” Dipper laughed, “but for those who have had strange encounters in that house, there’s this unexplainable urge to go back there, like it’s calling across distance for them to return.”

“That...” I trailed off, shaking my head. “That sounds ridiculous, but I can’t deny it. Greg and I have been experiencing a similar sensation ever since returning from the Unknown. It’s hard to truly describe the feeling. It’s not a call or a desire, and even calling it a pull or an urge doesn’t sound quite right. It’s a sensation that’s utterly indescribable, yet it’s always there like a blur in my periphery.”

“That’s incredible,” he said in rapt awe.

“It’s not, though,” I rebuffed. “There are times when I wonder if maybe this life is a dream, and that Greg and I are still trapped in the Unknown.”

He drew himself forward in his chair, raising an eyebrow, “Really?”

“You heard it in our interview,” I sighed. “Neither of us really remembers how we got back to the moment when we left. The woodsman blew out the lantern and the forest was a thick black around us. We bid farewell to Beatrice in that darkness before I opened my eyes and I was underwater. It was like waking from one nightmare to fall directly into another. There was no transition from walking in the woods to drowning in the water. We went from one point to another in an instant.”

“Sometimes that’s just how the mind works,” he said, waving a hand. “If we go under the assumption that you indeed had a near-death experience, then that would line up with how it was dreamlike.”

“Oftentimes I’ll have dreams where Greg and I are still in the Unknown, having new adventures together,” I continued. “They feel so real, as though I’m wide awake as I’m experiencing them, yet I know it’s a dream. I would have brushed them off as ordinary dreams, my mind collecting fragments of the day and combining them with the ever-present pull the Unknown has upon me, but Greg and I will talk and find that we had the same dream, even if our perspectives of that dream are completely different.”

“So, like... lucid dreaming?” Dipper’s brows furrowed as he pondered how to properly process what I was saying.

I shook my head, “I don’t think it’s lucid dreaming. It doesn’t feel like that, but I’m not sure what lucid dreaming really is, honestly.”

“It’s a dream where the dreamer is aware that they’re in a dream and can maneuver through the dream and change it,” Dipper replied.

“When you put it that way, then it definitely sounds like lucid dreaming,” I sighed, “but that doesn’t explain why Greg and I share the same dream.”

He shrugged, “Shared dreaming has been a known phenomenon for thousands of years across many cultures, and it doesn’t particularly mean anything supernatural or paranormal unless you attribute that kind of meaning to it.”

I was beginning to get annoyed that he had a rational answer for everything I had to say, “Then why is it that all of my memories of the Unknown are more vivid than any memory I’ve had here, in this world?”

Dipper paused, moving his position in his chair several times, the wood of it creaking with each small movement he made. I finally had his attention again. “What do you mean?”

I rested my back against the hard back of the chair, its sounds an echo of the creaking of Dipper’s chair. This was something I hadn’t even told Greg, though I imagined that he felt the same way. “I can say with certainty that the reason my memories before that incident are so muddy and fragmented is because I was a child, but the same cannot be said for how my more recent memories feel less vivid and real compared to my memories of the Unknown.” I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh, mumbling softly, “I don’t know how to explain this properly...”

“You mean you don’t remember our summer together from back then?” I could hear bewilderment in his voice.

I shook my head, “No, it’s not like that. I remember that well, but it’s more...” I grimaced, opening my eyes. “My memories of the Unknown aren’t as fractured and staggered as my other memories. Like... you know how when you’re trying to remember something from many years ago, that you’ll get a vague image of it in your head, like you’re reaching for something far away despite it just being buried in your mind somewhere?” He nodded slightly. “I don’t have that issue with the memories I have from the Unknown. My memories from there are so vivid that they feel like I was there only yesterday. It’s why it’s so easy for me to recall things that happened there. I need only find something that reminds me of that time, and I’m transported there so quickly as though I’m conjuring up the memory of what I had for dinner last night just by looking at the dirty dishes in the sink. It’s like a waking dream that follows me no matter what I’m doing. It isn’t a nostalgic feeling, but more the feeling of still being there. Oddly, I can’t imagine my life now without that sensation clinging to my soul. It’s becoming like a comfort to me.”

“But I thought you hated it there,” he said with confusion.

“I never said I hated it,” I chuckled. “I said it wasn’t exactly fun, but I could envision myself living there in the Unknown. There were many towns that we visited where I found myself thinking, ‘Maybe we could just live here and it’d be fine.’ The Unknown had a cozy familiarity to it that I don’t mention too often. We had a lot of adventures that were terrifying and traumatizing, for sure, but in our downtime while walking or resting, I could picture myself staying in the Unknown forever.”

He stared at me quietly for a long moment, a faint expression of disbelief crossing his face. He was wearing that hat with his podcast’s logo on it again today and the brim of it obscured his eyes in the dim lighting of the room we sat in. “You really thought that?”

“I still do,” I said quietly, feeling a bit ashamed as the words left me. “Even with its strange sun and unchanging night sky, I felt comfortable there despite wanting to get home. I feel like... I-I feel like if Greg hadn’t been there with me, then I may have stayed in Pottsfield for the rest of my life, or any number of the other towns we visited. Even with the Beast lurking in the woods, I would have been content being there forever, living a simple life among the simple folk of the Unknown, celebrating the harvest and the seasons, and enjoying the simplicity of that place without worrying about what woes ail me in this world. It’s why I don’t really mind the pull on my soul to return there anymore. Deep down, I feel like I’ll one day return there no matter what, like I was supposed to have always been there.” I shook my head as I let free a short laugh, “Sometimes, I wonder what my life had been like if I never came back. It’s silly, isn’t it?”

“Wirt, that’s...” He frowned and lowered his eyes, shaking his head. “That’s why you say things like that,” he mumbled. “It’s all making sense now...”

I was perplexed by that response, smiling nervously, “What?”

He looked up at me with a small smile, “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Let’s go check on Greg to make sure he’s not making a mess down there, okay?”

I blinked at the pace to which the conversation had switched. There was something in his tone that made it seem like he understood something about me that I didn’t know, and that worried me in a way that it shouldn’t have. What could he have possibly figured out about me in that exchange that he wanted to keep from me? I thought we were trying to not have secrets anymore. However, I didn’t press him on it. It was getting late and I was already too tired to focus much more on things that would inevitably hurt my brain.

“Yeah, let’s see what he’s up to and then we can all go home.” I smiled at him, hoping that he would read it as me no longer being upset or annoyed with him. Truthfully, knowing that he didn’t have any more of these gigantic secrets lurking behind him was a relief to me. The secrets in this room would continue to remain secrets, as they had nothing to do with either of us, and it meant that it could be sealed again.

We both stood up, dust particles dancing around us with the movement. I patted my clothes to get as much of the dust off as I could and Dipper did the same before we both walked towards the elevator. As we got in and rode to the bottom, we kept quiet and didn’t look at each other at all. On the bottom floor, Greg was sitting at the main control panel, flipping random switches and pushing random buttons and pouting. He said that the UFO-sub was cool, but he really wished that all the buttons in the control room worked. We all laughed a little and piled into the elevator, making our way back to ground level and out to the car. When we had arrived at the Mystery Shack, the sun was still in the sky, though her position was crawling towards the mountains. Now the moon was out and shining his silver light upon us, though only a portion of his face was revealed to us. The stars twinkled against the bluish black background of the sky, constellations blinking their formations down to us as I drove beneath their ancient gaze. I dropped Dipper off at his house and he offered to let us stay the evening. Greg wanted to take him up on the offer, but I politely declined. I still didn’t feel like we were comfortable enough to be doing that again. “Okay, then,” was his dejected reply that was followed by a hasty, “I love you,” as he shut the car door behind him. From my lowered window, I called back to him, “I love you, too,” which elicited a charmingly goofy grin from Dipper as he walked backwards toward his house, stumbling slightly as he waved at us while I backed out of his driveway.

“Did you guys make up properly?” Greg asked as we finally hit the highway.

I shook my head slightly as I changed lanes, “Not really, but I feel like I can trust him again.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “But you said that you love him.”

“I do love him,” I insisted, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to easily forgive him. I thought maybe I could, but I can’t.”

Greg made a noise that indicated his confusion. “I guess I really don’t understand how that kind of love works...”

“Honestly, Greg,” I sighed, “I don’t think anyone really knows how love’s supposed to work.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so weird typing "bro-bro" when I'm so used to calling my twin brother "bro-man" as a term of affection. I've seen that tweet going around of how people supposedly call their siblings, and honestly I call mine by either his name, the words "bro" or "brother," and sometimes "bro-man." If I wanna make him mad, I'll call him "toad" because that's the meanest thing I could think to call him when we were kids. He'll sometimes inexplicably call me "ick-blick" or "squirrel girl," but for the most part he calls me by my name. I don't understand how people can call their siblings mean names all the time. Or maybe I'm just not white enough to understand why you'd call your sibling mean names and label it as a term of endearment...

My conversation with Wirt weighed heavily on my mind. I was more or less hoping to maybe hear an explanation as to why he seemed to keep his family at a distance, but instead he gave me something more troubling to process. I had always assumed that he disliked his experience in the Unknown and that he never wanted to go back there, given that was the impression he gave off rather forcefully whenever it was brought up, but now I was confused. It seemed like he was instead acting that way so he wouldn’t focus so much on how much he wanted to go back there. It was some strange reverse psychology that he was pulling on himself and it was only barely working.

I immediately called Mabel once I was inside my house.

“How was the game?” she asked almost immediately after she picked up the phone. I’d told her the day before that we were still going to play today despite the tension between myself and Wirt.

“It was good,” I replied, keeping my voice fairly cheerful as I seated myself at my desk in the basement. My plan was to play video games on my computer before I headed off to bed. “Greg’s a complete nut-ball, which kept me on my toes the whole time! He’s definitely a wildcard.”

“And did you make up with Wirt?” She was going right for the kill, it seemed.

“Not exactly,” I said slowly, wincing a little. Even though I had apologized, Wirt didn’t really outright say that he’d forgiven me. The fact that he was willing to see me at all after what had happened was a godsend, so obtaining total forgiveness at all would be a miracle.

“Dipper...” Her disappointment was injurious.

“It’ll take time to earn back his trust,” I said carefully, “so I wasn’t really expecting to be forgiven just like that.”

She made a noise that was hard to qualify, “You’re such a moron, sabotaging a great relationship like that. You two coulda already been on the train to Smooch Town, but you totally blew it!”

“Hey, you’re the one who said it wouldn’t hurt our relationship if I told him,” I retorted.

“I said he wouldn’t dump you,” she remarked, “which he totally didn’t, just like I said. I never said it wouldn’t hurt your relationship, which I figured it would given I’m still kinda mad at you about it.”

“I already apologized,” I cried out.

She giggled, “I know, but I like rubbing it in your face!”

“Mabel!”

She cackled, “I’m kidding! I already forgave you, but you still gotta figure out how to get on Wirt’s good side again, don’tcha?”

I groaned, “What am I gonna do? He says he loves me still, but he’s keeping me at a distance!”

“I dunno,” she said unhelpfully. “This is something you gotta figure out yourself. You’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”

Thinking out loud, I started to speak, “Maybe I should... go on a normal date with him? I don’t... I-I don’t really know what normal dates look like, though...” It felt weird admitting it aloud, but I really was pretty bad at dating and Mabel knew it. I always found myself becoming flustered and awkward when it came to asking anyone out. Friends and family kept telling me that I would get better at it over time and with experience, but I continued to stay at the same level of awful when it came to flirting that I was at when I hit puberty. The fact of the matter was that I was bad at dating.

Mabel hummed thoughtfully, “Dinner and a movie? You guys like those superhero movies, right? Maybe go out for a nice dinner then see a flashy movie?”

“That could work,” I said, hope filling me up a little. We’d said that we would see a movie together this summer, so doing it as an official date seemed like something good to start off with. Wirt had called this a restart to our relationship, and it was really feeling that way. Going in with a fresh start by doing something normal for a date seemed like a nice way to ease into our relationship again. There was little chance of me screwing up a date to see a movie, after all. “Yeah, I like that idea. Thanks, Mabel!”

“Any time, bro-bro! You know I’m always here for excellent date ideas!” I could hear the swelling of pride in her voice.

I smiled a little, thinking about how this date could go before I remembered my original reason for calling Mabel at all, “Wait, I have to tell you something.”

The urgency in my voice seemed to jar her as she let out a surprised noise, “What is it? Did something else bad happen with you and Wirt that you’re not telling me?”

I shook my head, knowing it wouldn’t be picked up by the receiver, “It’s about Wirt, but it’s not anything relationship related.”

“Okay,” she said as curiosity filled her, “I’m listening.”

“Well, uh,” I began uncertainly, not quite knowing where to start, “we... we got on the subject of secrets, about how he wanted us to not have any more big secrets between us if this relationship is going to work.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Mabel hummed.

“And I asked him if he had any big secrets to share with me. I kinda wanted to know about his family issues, since he’s a little cagy about his parents.” Mabel made sounds of affirmation, making sure that I was aware that she was listening carefully. “He said he didn’t feel comfortable telling me about his family issues right now—”

“Totally understandable,” she interjected.

“Yeah, I told him I got that he wasn’t comfortable about telling me right now, so instead he started telling me something that was... kinda troubling...” I could hear her moving on the other side, likely trying to find a good position to relax in while listening to the gossip I was about to spill. “He began to tell me that ever since he came back from the Unknown, he’s felt an urge to go back there, like it’s calling him back. Apparently Greg feels it, too. He then started to tell me that he sometimes feels like this world is an illusion or a dream, and that he’ll one day wake up and find he’s still trapped in the Unknown.”

“That’s definitely troubling,” Mabel said slowly. “And Greg feels that way, too?”

I shook my head, “He only feels that pull, which Wirt described as a ‘pull on his soul’ or something like that. I think Wirt’s the only one of the two who believes that he might still be trapped in the Unknown.”

“That’s awful,” she gasped lightly. “Greg’s never mentioned that to me before, though.”

“Probably because he’s used to it by now,” I shrugged. “Wirt said that he’s used to it, too, and that he can’t imagine his life without feeling that pull. He also said something that really surprised me.”

“What’s that?”

“That the Unknown was a comfortable place for him.”

“What?!” Mabel was also surprised by that. “But I thought that place was, like, super creepy and messed up!”

“It’s what he said to me,” I replied with a shrug. “He told me that if he hadn’t had Greg with him while in the Unknown, he might’ve stayed in one of the towns there and lived out the rest of his life there. That’s how comfortable that place was for him.”

She exclaimed loudly, “That’s ridiculous! I thought you said he hated the Unknown!”

“I thought so, too, but he said he never said he hated it. When I thought on that, it was absolutely true. I mean, I even asked him during the interview for the podcast if he thought the experience was negative, and he said it wasn’t.”

“Weird,” she hummed.

“Oh, and he said something else that was a bit worrying.”

She choked out a noise, “He has even more secrets that he threw at you out of nowhere?”

“Well, I mean... I did ask him to tell me his biggest secrets, and I can definitely see why he was keeping all of this a secret.”

She wheezed loudly, “Heck yeah, I’d keep those thoughts secret, too! What’s the other thing he told you?”

I sucked in a deep breath, “Beyond having weird dreams and sensations since then, he told me that his memories of the Unknown are more vivid and real than his memories from this world.”

“Uh-huh... and what does that mean?”

I laughed lightly, “I asked him that as well, and he said that unlike his other memories from that long ago, his memories of the Unknown are so vivid that they feel like they happened yesterday. He doesn’t struggle to pull out those memories in the same way he struggles to even pull out the memories of our summer together back then.”

“Oh, man, yeah,” she spoke in a low tone, “that’s all mega-troubling.”

“Mega-ultra-troubling,” I added, “but it gives me a little insight into his personality and his behavior.”

Mabel groaned, “Oh, no, are you going to speculate on the psychology of your boyfriend? Because that’s pretty unromantic and probably gonna make Wirt hate you.”

“No-no, nothing like that,” I said quickly. “It just makes me think that his connection with the Unknown has possibly influenced him in ways he doesn’t even realize. Like maybe it’s why he likes vintage things so much.”

She booed me loudly. “He’s allowed to like old stuff without it being linked to his childhood trauma or whatever.”

“Then what about his weird pagan vibe?”

Mabel snorted out a laugh, “What ‘weird pagan vibe’? He’s just a poet sometimes. You’re not gonna psychoanalyze your boyfriend, Dipper. That’s what you’re _not_ going to do.”

“Fine,” I scoffed, “but it still doesn’t change the fact that what he told me is extremely troubling.”

“No, that stuff is mega-ultra-super-troubling,” she concurred, “but the fact that he told you it means he’s comfortable with you enough to tell you all of that. It means you didn’t damage your relationship as much as you thought you did.”

“I guess,” I sighed lightly, “but now I feel a bit burdened by that knowledge. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it now that I have it, and it worries me that he has these thoughts and feelings that I can’t help him with.” I let out a bitter laugh, “Honestly, he seems to not want help with those feelings at all. It makes me wonder... if he was given a choice between being with me or going back to the Unknown for the rest of his life, which would he choose? Before I knew all of that, I would have easily assumed that he’d choose me over the Unknown, but now I’m not so sure.”

“He’d choose you, silly,” Mabel said gently. “I know he would. He loves you.”

I sighed, “I wish I could be as certain as you.”

There was a brief pause on Mabel’s end, and I could only assume that she was trying her best how to phrase whatever her next sentence was going to be. “If you’re worried, then you should probably just ask him.”

“I can’t just ask him something like that,” I replied swiftly, sounding more flustered than I felt.

“You won’t know until you try, so just give it a shot. Trust me!” There was an odd pause before she spoke again. “Wink! I’m winking. I winked. You get that I’m winking, right?”

“Yes, I can tell you’re winking.” I couldn’t tell that she was winking, but I took her word for it.

“Awesome!” She laughed loudly for a moment before speaking again, “Now go get some sleep. I can tell you’re tired.”

“Really?” I didn’t feel particularly tired, but it must have sounded that way in my voice. GMing always did do a number on my vocal cords. It was my voice that was tired, not my body.

“Yeah,” she said with a slight yawn. “It’s late, and you definitely had a day.”

“It was _definitely_ a day,” I chuckled. “All right, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“You know it, bro-bro!” She made a noise indicating that she was firing finger guns that I couldn’t see.

I laughed a little more loosely, “Okay, then. Night!”

“Night!!” Her voice was loud as she said that one word but was cut off by the sound of the call ending. I watched the screen flash the time and it really was too early for me to be going to bed. It wasn’t even midnight, and my goal was to stay up until 3am. I booted up the game I had wanted to play and fell quietly into the zone, though thoughts of Wirt’s confessions to me still flitted by in my mind. Mabel seemed confident that Wirt would absolutely choose me over anything else, but I wasn’t so sure. I’d only recently reentered his life, after all. I could easily be erased from it without consequence. That knowledge alone made me uneasy. Hopefully, restarting this relationship by going back to basics would make it so that I wouldn’t have doubts in my mind anymore. No more secrets and no more lies. This time, I was ready to be in a relationship.


	31. Chapter 31

The question was so simple: “Do you wanna see a movie Friday?”

I stared at it for a long time, to the point where one of my coworkers commented on how engrossed in that simple text message I was. It had arrived at the beginning of lunch and I was sitting in the breakroom eating while contemplating at length what my response should be to it. I didn’t want to seem too eager to reply, yet I also didn’t want to let it linger for too long. Also, I was still a little mad at him.

“Just say yes,” my coworker said as she left the lunch table to return to her duties. My agonizing over it must have annoyed her, but it really felt to me like a big decision given how much had happened so recently between us.

After continuing to agonize over it for another ten minutes, I finally accepted his proposal. It had been a long time since I’d gone to the movie theater for a date. It felt like the easiest and simplest date to put together, so there was no way Dipper could screw it up. This could be an easy route towards redemption for him, and I wanted him to succeed. Arrangements were made for what movie we would ultimately be seeing, a time for watching it was decided upon, and Dipper made a point to tell me that he intended on purchasing everything. He even wanted to pick me up at my house, like Prince Charming arriving in his big red truck. It was good to know that he also wanted everything to go as smoothly as possible.

The week sped by before it abruptly landed itself on Friday evening. I was a bit surprised that he chose Friday, given that Fridays were a sacred time for him and his sister to interact without interruption. Certainly he must have informed his sister of this date he was arranging and gotten her blessing on it. From what I gathered while talking to Greg, she was more invested in my relationship with Dipper than any other outside party. Only one of my coworkers knew of my relationship with Dipper, AKA the aforementioned one, and she was barely interested. I did appreciate her giving me a passing “good luck” on my way out that afternoon, but beyond this, she was fairly disinterested in what I was doing with Dipper. Even Greg’s interest was more a desire for me to keep on good terms with Dipper so he could continue playing DD&MD.

Dipper arrived on time at my doorstep, greeting me with the nervous grin of a teenager about to go on his first date. The word “cute” flashed across my mind briefly, but it was enough to catch my attention as I laughed at the word. There were no comments on our outfits, since we were dressed plainly for our date. It was only a movie, after all. He asked if I wanted to pick up a quick bite to eat before heading to the theater, but I declined. I wondered if he was growing annoyed at how often I seemed to decline his offers. He was, of course, undeterred and we arrived at the movie theater early. It was a theater that I had been to only once before, since it was a little out of the way for me, but I remembered it being fairly nice and amazingly clean for a movie theater. It seemed my memory was correct as it maintained its cleanly features and nice décor in the two or so years it had been since last I had visited it. Dipper, as he had previously insisted, bought our large drinks and tub of popcorn, which we shared throughout our viewing of the movie.

Speaking of the movie, it was excellent! As much as I like the campy nature of older science fiction films, modern comic book films are thoroughly enjoyable and incredible in both graphics and story. We had a wonderful time, and both of us gasped at the teaser that appeared at the end of the credits. All in all, it was a perfect date. Dipper had succeeded.

The trip back to my home from the theater was uneventful. We talked excitedly about the movie we had just seen and speculated about what was teased at the end of the credits. It felt good talking to him casually again. This was what I loved about him, after all. His awkward nervousness from earlier had melted away, allowing him to be free and open with me as though the heaviness of our previous encounters had never happened. With that business behind us, we could ease ourselves into this relationship and no longer be bogged down by secrets that should have never existed in the first place.

Soon, we arrived at my house, the truck in park in my driveway and the engine turned off as the stars flickered faintly above us through wispy clouds. We sat in Dipper’s truck, talking with each other about various things, neither of us feeling quite ready to part. It had been the best date I had had in a long time, despite how simple it was. Truthfully, I always felt blessed whenever I spent time with Dipper, even during those tumultuous encounters. I loved being with him, even when things were complicated or uneasy.

“Can I ask you something personal?” Dipper asked quietly, looking away from me for the first time since he had parked his vehicle in my driveway.

A jolt pierced my heart, fearing what he could possibly be asking me about. I really didn’t want to end the evening on yet another sour note. “I guess,” was my uncertain reply.

“It’s not a bad question,” he said with a very faint laugh. “I was just wondering how long you’ve been into vintage stuff and antiques. I-I mean, you were into that kind of stuff when I first met you, so... it’s gotta be a long time, right?”

I let out a breath that turned into gentle laughter. I was nervous for no reason. That was a perfectly acceptable question for him to ask! “I’ve liked old stuff ever since I was little,” I smiled. “It started with being curious about things like old steam trains when I was very young, then I got interested in cassette tapes and record players, which is how I discovered a love for classical music and, in particular, the clarinet. After that, I started learning about everything I could from different time periods, which is how I started enjoying architecture and design so much. I would read books from the library about different decades all the time, their influence bleeding into my life bit by bit, and before I knew it, I was dressing like this and collecting all kinds of vintage junk!”

Dipper laughed lightly, “That makes sense! I bet that’s why you said the Unknown felt comfortable.”

I nodded slightly, “A little bit, yeah. Although... even though I say that I could maybe live there, I don’t think I could truly thrive without internet or cell service.”

“I feel like electricity at all should be the first priority,” he chuckled.

“Yeah, there were no TVs or refrigerators in the Unknown!” I laughed lightly with him, joining in the joke, but there was a part of me that didn’t entirely believe my own words. When Greg and I were there in the Unknown, I only had passing thoughts to things like phones or televisions, but didn’t yearn for them much at all. Even in those lucid dreams where I’m trapped in the Unknown, I don’t feel like I miss my modern comforts. It’s as though two versions of me exist, one that could thrive easily in the archaic world of the Unknown and one that is a modern man living in this modern era. Dipper didn’t need to know that secret, though, if it was even a secret at all.

“The fact that you two managed to survive there without any modern amenities for as long as you did is pretty impressive,” he mused quietly after our laughter subsided.

“I just thought of it as camping, but without a tent or provisions,” I replied, shaking my head.

“After you told me everything last week,” he began slowly, “I started to wonder a lot of things. If that was why you liked vintage things, if that was why your poetry shifted to the natural world... I even thought that you would choose the Unknown over me. But I realized that your experience in the Unknown isn’t what defines you. It’s part of you, just like everything I’ve lived is part of me, and I shouldn’t be so focused on defining you based on some traumatic thing that happened to you fifteen years ago.”

I blinked at him, dumbfounded for a moment. After we spoke on Saturday, he apparently did that over-speculating thing that he did all too often, but it seemed like he figured out that doing so was pointless and unimportant. He had finally matured. “You’re right, that experience doesn’t completely define me. I’ve had many other experiences, though none of which are as strange as that. With time, we can reveal the rest of our truths to each other. There are gaps for each of us when it comes to what our lives are like. I don’t know much about your parents, and you don’t know much about mine. Neither of us has revealed how our experience at college was, and I’d really like to hear stories about that from you, considering you have more than one Ph.D.!” He looked away, blushing a little. “But we have time. You know that, right? This relationship... I want us to have time to let it grow, like a tree sinking its roots deep into the soil. Those roots need to be firm and secure in order for the tree to become mighty and strong.”

He nodded slightly, glancing back in my direction. “You want our love to be like a tree?”

I smiled gently, “Yes, like a tree that grows to bloom beautiful in the spring and wear lush, vibrant green come summer. Like a tree whose leaves dance like fire in the autumn and stands strong and patient during the winter. That tree is our love, but right now its bark is soft and its trunk is thin, needing extra care to face whatever hardships will be in its future. When it matures, though, it will be hardy and steadfast.”

“I love it when you talk like that,” he said as a delicate smile curved sweetly at his lips, his round cheeks touching the bottom of his glasses frames and pushing them up slightly. “The words you say sometimes are so beautiful.”

I could feel the warmth of embarrassment prickling at my ears, “Thanks... I’m glad you like how I speak. Some people don’t.”

“They just don’t appreciate how pretty your words are,” he said and I could tell that he was being sincere.

That warmth of embarrassment rushed quickly across my cheeks, warming my face. I was never good at receiving compliments, and hearing such praise hurled at me by a man I loved so much felt surreal. Most people I knew in my professional life were annoyed when I used wild metaphors or flowery language to convey my thoughts, finding the way I spoke sometimes to be a bit too wordy, yet Dipper seemed to genuinely enjoy that part about me. I didn’t know what to say, so I sat there, my gaze falling as I smiled weakly behind the rosy shade of my blushing cheeks.

A hand rested itself on my leg, and my eyes traveled upward to find Dipper smiling sweetly at me. I think I was still smiling weakly at him as I had been before, though my memory blurs a bit when I think back to this time. There’s a gap between that moment and the moment when I felt his lips against my own. I remember the taste of his lips, though: still salty from the popcorn we had devoured together. I remember only that much from how quick it was. As fast as his lips had touched against mine, they were just as hastily pulled away. It was such a light and delicate kiss, as though a flower petal had landed on my lips before being blown away by a gentle spring breeze. His expression is still imprinted on my memory, despite the flaws in remembering some details. There have never been words enough to describe his expression when his face pulled away from mine. The simplest word I can find in my vocabulary is “loving,” as his gaze was indeed filled with more love than I thought possible for a face to show, but there was more to it than that. It was certainly not the first time we had kissed, yet it felt so much like the first time and that expression he wore was one I had never seen him wear before. Everything felt so strangely new. There was a surge of yearning for more than just that simple contact between us, craving more of whatever this newness was, but I made no effort in obtaining what I wanted. Instead, I resigned myself to savoring this moment that was happening between us in its wordlessness and simplicity.

What seemed an eternity and an instant passed, and Dipper’s hand eventually moved to settle itself on the steering wheel. There was reluctance in that movement and hesitation in his voice as he finally broke the silence, “S-sorry...”

I was still filled with awe, watching him quietly before I registered his short apology. With my ability to communicate returning, my head slowly shook as I mumbled almost breathlessly, “Don’t be sorry...” This time it was my turn to touch him gently, resting a hand on the one that had just left my leg. His hand moved and took mine in his, grasping it warmly as he drew it to his lips and softly kissed my fingers. “I love you,” I whispered as he pressed his cracked lips gently against each of my fingers. “I love you so much.”

When each digit on my hand had been given a kiss, my hand was returned to me, freed from the warmth of his large, rough hand. That warmth lingered for a few seconds, a reminder of how gentle Dipper was. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back to the bridge of his nose as he let out a sheepish laugh, “I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed about kissing you like that.”

I hummed, shifting my position so I could look out the windshield, the moon smiling down upon us in approval. “We’re both a bit out of practice, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, resting his head against the headrest. “Are you sure it’s okay that I... you know, kissed you?”

“I’m sure,” I chuckled lightly.

I could hear him wanting to apologize again, but he caught himself, “Do you, uh... want me to walk you to your door...?”

I laughed, “Are you kicking me out now?”

“N-no,” he sputtered, “I just thought it’s getting kinda late and I know you like to go to bed early!”

“I’m kidding!” I scooted over to kiss him on the cheek quickly, “You’re right, though, it’s getting late. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

He blushed a little at the kiss, but the color faded rapidly. He nodded and said, “Yeah, we can go on another date or just hang out or something. Whatever you’d like!”

“Whatever I’d like, hm?” I stroked my chin, “That’s a lot of power you’re giving me, so I’ll see what I can think up.”

“I think that power’s good in your hands,” he chuckled. “Oh, but don’t forget that our birthday is coming up soon.”

“’Our’?”

“Me and Mabel’s birthday,” he grinned. “She’s planning a party at my place that I accidentally agreed to. You’ll be getting an invitation in the mail soon. Our parents will be coming up, too, so it’s going to be this whole big thing...”

That made sense, Mabel wanting to have a party at Dipper’s house again. With a house so huge, it was only fitting that friends and family alike would want to utilize all of that space for parties. Only one thing loomed heavily over me as he talked about this party he was soon to be having: His parents were coming, and he had invited me over. This meant that I was going to be meeting his parents if I decided to go to his party, and I didn’t feel like I was ready for that encounter.

I winced, hearing my voice crack as I asked, “I-is it really such a good idea for me to come if your parents will be there?”

Dipper shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they’d love to meet you. I always make sure to introduce my partners to them, and I’m positive that they’ll love you!”

I made a noise. I didn’t really know what the noise was, but it might have been a panicked primal noise. “I-I mean, if... you want me to, but... I was kind of hoping we could just do something small, y-you know, just the two of us? Intimately? Together?”

He nodded slowly as his mouth curled into a smirk, “Oooohh, I got’cha. Well, um, we can do that and you can still come to the party. I know you’re not a fan of parties, but I’d really appreciate it if you came. It’s kind of a tradition for Mabel and me to have a party and for almost all of Gravity Falls to show up to it.”

“So... it’ll be like a repeat of the housewarming party, but with more cake?”

“Yeah, basically,” he shrugged with a laugh. “C’mon, just visit for a little bit, meet my folks, then you can jet out quietly.”

I shook my head, “If Greg’s coming, then there’s no way I’ll be able to leave early.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dipper said as he tapped a finger to his lips. “Well, um... Please, just come.” His eyes were pleading with me just as much as his words were, “Come for my sake. You know I’ll be just as uncomfortable with so many people buzzing around my house as you’ll be. I promise it’ll be fine.”

I sighed, relenting, “Fine, I’ll go, but only because you’ll be there.”

“Thanks,” he laughed lightly. “Trust me, everything’ll be fine!”

The smile on his lips made me want to believe him, but there was a growing sensation of fear in the pit of my stomach. Dark scenarios crept into my mind and I tried my best to ignore them in that moment. I wanted to remain hopeful at the end of this otherwise lovely evening and not have the terror of meeting Dipper’s parents looming over me like a swirling black hole of uncertainty threatening to suck my entire being into its unending void of obliterating nothingness.

My response to his optimism was a curt nod. His expression softened and he leaned in close to give my lips another quick peck, the haste of it making my heart flutter a bit as I felt that quiet desire for more bubble up within me again. “You’ll be okay, Wirt,” he whispered. He must have sensed my growing unease as terrible thoughts burbled and seethed in my mind.

His words and actions worked, at least for that moment in time. My smile returned, small as it was, and I mumbled, “Okay.” I sniffed in a breath through my nose, glancing down at the mud and leaves caked on the floor of his truck. If he said everything would be okay, then I would just have to trust him. I would put my faith in his words. I had never met his parents before, but I could only assume that they were decent people given how Dipper and Mabel turned out. It would be fine, I thought. It would be fine.

“I should,” I said slowly, “I-I should probably get going. You were right before, it’s getting late.” Though, by glancing at the clock on his truck, it was definitely late now. “I’ll, um... I’ll look out for that birthday party invitation.”

He nodded, grinning, “If it gets lost in the mail, just let me know and I’ll text you all the details, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said as I turned my attention to the passenger side door, fumbling to open it. “I’ll, uh, see you later? Whenever I figure out what we should do next?”

A gentle laugh slipped from his lips, “You don’t need to think too hard on it. Whatever comes to mind, just let me know. And if you can’t think of anything, then we can just do another movie night.”

I finally managed to open the door and descended from his truck, “Okay, that sounds like a good backup plan.” When my feet had planted themselves on the concrete of my driveway, I regarded him with a small smile once more. “Goodnight, Dipper. Tonight was... really nice.”

His grin widened and he leaned towards the opened door, “Does this mean I’m officially forgiven for all the stress I put you through?”

I couldn’t help but let free a small laugh, “Yes, you’re officially forgiven now.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed as he sat back up in his seat. He pulled down his seatbelt, securing it across his lap with a satisfying click, “See ya later, Wirt, and sweet dreams!”

My feet walked backward two steps as I chuckled, “See ya, Dipper. Have a safe drive home and thank you for tonight.” With those words, I slammed shut the opened door and walked around the front of the vehicle as it started up. When I reached my front door, I waved to Dipper and he waved back before shifting his truck into reverse and pulling out of my driveway, heading back towards the main roads and Gravity Falls. I entered my home, shutting the door behind me as I let out a long noise. It was another primal vocalization that I have no words to properly describe, but when the noise finished being hurled from my vocal cords, I found my body slumped on the floor, my back pressed against the door, and my body shaking.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brother and I recently celebrated our 35th birthday. He and I have always celebrated our birthday together. We're not big fans of parties, but when we were younger we would have large parties for our friends. Back when we were in elementary school, we would invite our entire class over for our birthday party, our entire class being only seven people. We went to a tiny Christian school. Anyway, my brother's friends would be downstairs, and my friends would be upstairs. This led to a lot of wacky stuff happening, such as: one of my friends kidnapping my brother in order to marry him, one of my brother's friends attempting to kill a duck with a Nerf gun and a piñata bat, that time one of my friends tried to hang my brother with a jump rope noose, someone nearly getting shot by the hillbilly neighbor, etc. Birthday parties are exhausting!
> 
> Thankfully, now that we're adults, things have settled down. We don't have elaborate birthday parties where children nearly get eaten by snakes. For this latest birthday, my brother and I went to Buca di Beppo and enjoyed a nice pasta dinner together. We gave each other one (1) gift. We then had a kinda-sorta party with our D&D crew where we played D&D and had slightly more cake than usual. Later on, he and I saw Captain Marvel together. All-in-all, a very calm birthday experience.
> 
> Also, yes, I live in a very redneck state. I almost got eaten by wild dogs during a sleepover once. One time, a partner thought it'd be cool if we got lost in the woods at night while coyotes were roaming around. Y'all, it's weird out here in corn country.

“You two kissed?!” Mabel’s voice squealed from my truck’s speakers. I decided to talk to her on my way home from the movie date knowing that she would’ve wanted details of what happened immediately, so I dialed her up and went hands-free. I opened with telling her that we kissed. “The train to Smooch Town is apparently a bullet train for you guys!!”

I laughed, embarrassed, “I feel like I should’ve asked him if it was okay first, but... he seemed okay with it afterward.”

“Oh, no,” her tone shifted, “was he actually okay with it or did he just say that to make you feel better?”

“He kissed me on the cheek after I apologized,” I said as the dark scenery of Oregon in summer whirled by my windows. “Does that count as confirmation?”

“I guess so?” She sounded a bit uncertain.

“If it helps, he was freaking out more over the idea of coming to our birthday party than he was about me kissing him.”

“Why was he freaking out over that?”

“Well,” I began, “you saw how he was at the housewarming, kinda distant and not sure what to do. He’s not really big into parties, and he’s also a little worried about our parents being there...”

She groaned, “You told him that our parents are gonna be there? Of course that’s going to freak him out. Meeting the parents is a big step in a relationship, and it’s already gonna be hard for him because he doesn’t like parties with a lot of people he doesn’t know!”

“I’m sorry,” I cried out, “but how was I supposed to know meeting our parents would be such a big deal for him?”

“Dipper, you can be such an idiot,” she laughed a bit bitterly.

“I reassured him that it would be okay,” I sighed. “And it will be. If he starts panicking or something, we can just hide out in my bedroom. It’ll be fine.”

“And if he feels like he’s not ready to meet our parents?”

“Then, uh...” I searched for the right way to answer the question. “Then... he doesn’t have to come?”

“Good,” she said firmly. “You can’t just force him into situations he’s not ready or willing to be in.”

“I know, but... I feel like if he met our parents, he’d really like them. And I really want Mom and Dad to like him, too. I know they’ll like him!”

“We both know they’d like him,” she sighed, “but you gotta think about what’s best for him. You shouldn’t drag him into doing something he doesn’t want to do.”

I made a sound to indicate that I understood, and I did. I already felt bad about saying anything at all. “I’ll make sure to tell him that the next time we talk.”

“You better,” she huffed.

“I will!”

She giggled, her demeanor lightening a little, “Good, now tell me the date details. You said you kissed, but what about everything else?”

I laughed a little at the change in mood, then told her everything that happened. I started with the movie, which she wasn’t entirely interested but she appreciated that we both had a good time. I told her a bit of what we talked about leading up to the kiss, most of which was boring, but there was the one important piece before the kiss that she needed to know, if only to follow up on the conversation we’d had last weekend.

“Then I finally asked him about when he started liking vintage stuff,” I said.

“You didn’t start with how you were speculating that his entire life was influenced by his near-death experience, did you?” She was clearly worried that I’d done exactly that, even after we’d talked to each other about how I shouldn’t do that at all.

“No, I just told him that I was wondering when he started liking that kind of stuff, and he said he’s liked old things since he was a kid. It started small and grew into him being surrounded by old stuff all the time.”

She laughed brightly, “I knew it wasn’t because of some weird paranormal experience!”

“Yeah-yeah,” I snorted. “I also asked him if that was why the Unknown felt so comfortable to him, and he said that was probably the case. He also said something like, ‘I say I’d wanna live there, but there’s no way I could live without internet and cell phones,’ and I kind of didn’t believe him... at least not entirely.”

“Dipper...” I could hear her wanting to chide me.

“I’m not speculating,” I said quickly. “I’m just telling you how it felt to me. For all I know, he was telling me the truth.”

“This goes back to trust,” Mabel hummed. “Can’t you just trust him?”

“I can,” I sighed, changing lanes as the exit that would take me to Gravity Falls came closer.

“Good-good,” she said before taking in a deep breath. “Now, are we to the part where you kiss?”

I laughed, “Almost! We somehow moved onto him talking about how he wanted our love to be like a tree and it was so poetic and beautiful, and the whole time I was just thinking about how much I love him, ya know?”

“Yesssss,” she hissed excitedly, “and then you both smooched?!”

“And then I smooched him, yeah,” I chuckled, exiting the highway and driving along the dark wooded roads that would lead me back towards home.

“OHMIGOSH I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!”

“Aren’t _I_ supposed to be the happy one?” I laughed lightly.

“And then you apologized to him because you kissed him outta nowhere, right?”

I nodded, which to her must have seemed like a weird pause, “It didn’t feel like it was out of nowhere, though. I told him that I loved it when he talks like a poet and he got shy and looked away, blushing. He looked so cute and handsome at the same time. I leaned over, since we were still in the truck, and I asked him ‘Can I?’ and he nodded, so I kissed him. It wasn’t until I saw his face after I’d done it that I realized asking ‘Can I?’ like that was kind of vague, which is why I apologized. I don’t know what it was about his expression that made me feel like I’d done something wrong, but he just...” I coughed out a breath, “A-anyway, it ended up that he wasn’t upset at all, but I still felt kinda embarrassed about it. He said it was just that we’re out of practice, but I don’t know...”

“It’s not a lie, though,” she laughed lightly. “You haven’t dated in a really long time, and you said Wirt hasn’t dated in a long time, either. You both gotta make up for that by practicing your smooching even more!”

“That’s a nice thing to have to practice, though,” I laughed in kind.

“Hey, but, what about after that?”

“Uh, that’s when the birthday party conversation happened,” I sighed.

“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “Well, at least the date was good. It sounds like it was good.”

“Yeah, it was great,” I laughed lightly, passing by familiar signage that pointed the way towards the Mystery Shack. “I have a feeling we’ll go out again soon, too!”

“That’s awesome!” She giggled lightly before stopping abruptly, “Wait... you two made out in your dirty old _truck_?! That’s, like, the least romantic place for riding the train to Smooch Town!”

“Hey, my truck is _not_ dirty _or_ old!”

“Pssh, says you!” Her laughter was so loud that I thought about just ending the call right there. “There’s so much mud and trash on the floor that I’m surprised he agreed to ride in there with you at all!”

“At least the outside of it is clean,” I huffed. “Besides, he doesn’t love me for my truck, you know.”

“Isn’t that a country song?”

I laughed, “It honestly could be. A real twang-y song, too, with maybe some banjo tossed in for fun!”

She began singing in the most awful accent, “He don’t love me for my truck, but he sure do like it rough!”

“Mabel, no!” I was laughing way too hard, which could’ve gotten me in trouble if I hadn’t already been turning into my driveway. The world around me was dark, leaving nothing but the bright stars and the moon above as my guiding light. My house was a blackened shape, not a light on inside as I pulled up to my garage. The door whirred open, bathing my truck in a warm, electric glow as I parked it inside.

“Oh, it sounds like you’re home,” Mabel giggled. “I thought the drive between Bend and Gravity Falls was longer than that!”

“It is if you go the speed limit,” I chuckled as I grabbed my phone and stepped out of the truck.

“Look at you doing a petty crime!”

I shut the door and went into my house, turning the lights on and kicking off my tennis shoes. It felt good to be home. “The real crime is that song you sang before,” I replied as I wandered into the living room and relaxed onto my sofa.

“My songs are magnificent,” she cried out in mock anger. “You’re just jealous!”

“Yep, it’s definitely jealousy I’m feeling,” I laughed lightly.

Our topic changed to talking about her week, which was fairly ordinary by comparison to what Wirt and I had just done, then we focused on the few television shows that we both watch, speculating a bit on what would happen in the coming episodes. We talked casually for a little less than an hour before we both agreed that it was late and we were too tired to talk anymore. I sluggishly dragged my tired bones up to my bedroom and changed into my pajamas, then collapsed into bed. The memory of those sweet kisses I shared with Wirt flickered in and out as I tried to hold on to the feelings I felt at the moment when our lips touched. His lips were a little dry, I thought, but no worse than mine, which are always too chapped. I should’ve at least put some Chapstick on my lips before kissing him, but it was so spontaneous and I couldn’t go back in time to change what happened. That was honestly the only thing I wanted to change from that moment. To my memory, everything felt perfect, and I eventually fell asleep in the knowledge that it was perfect.


	33. Chapter 33

The invitation to the party arrived in the mail a few days later, cheerfully inviting both myself and Gregory to celebrate Dipper and Mabel’s 27th birthday at Dipper’s house. It was fairly obvious that Mabel had lovingly made the invitation herself, as it was colorful and bright and covered in more stickers than necessary. There was a line on the card with RSVP information that she had scribbled out in scented marker and written underneath “We already know you’re coming!!!” I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, it seemed, as both siblings were under the impression that I was automatically going to be there. If I had been presented with this invite and none of the prior knowledge that Dipper had assaulted me with earlier, then I likely would have agreed with the assumption that I was going to the party without question, but now I was uncertain. I had promised Dipper that I would come, but I continued to fret over the idea of meeting his parents. Did his parents even know we were dating? They must have, right? Although... Dipper seemed perfectly fine withholding information from them ordinarily, so perhaps they had no idea that he was dating anyone at all. If that was the case, then would they be blindsided by the knowledge of us dating, therefore making things even more awkward? These thoughts and more swirled in my head for days, causing me much more anxiety than I doubted Dipper had intended. For him, he likely thought this would be something simple wherein I say hello to his parents, we chat for a bit, and then everything is magically fine. Little did he realize that this was Pandora’s Box that he had opened and all of my nightmares began leaking out as an inky fog that muddied everything around me.

“You’re looking more somber than usual,” Greg observed one evening as we watched a game show on TV, “and that’s saying something ‘cause you always look kinda somber.”

“I feel more morose than somber,” I sighed, tapping my finger against the remote lightly. “I appreciate your word usage, though.”

He hummed slightly, “Don’t somber and morose mean basically the same thing?” He was sprawled out on the sofa while I was seated neatly in my armchair, and from my periphery I could see him pull out his phone to look up the definitions of both words. “One means ‘gloomy or grave’ and the other means ‘sullen or ill-tempered’.” I turned my gaze to him and he frowned, “Don’t those all mean basically the same thing?”

“I mean, yeah? Sort of? I guess?”

Instead of freely going into further frustrating banter, he gave me an odd look that appeared almost serious. “You’ve been actin’ funny since Friday. What happened to make you so...” He gestured and made a noise, neither of which seemed related to the other.

I huffed out another sigh and turned to stare at the television. “I don’t feel like I owe you an explanation.”

“You kinda do, though?” He shifted to sit up on the sofa, looking straight at me.

“What I do with Dipper is private,” I muttered, focusing my attention to the television.

“I get that, but you know that’s not what I’m talking about.” I knew exactly what he was talking about and I felt no obligation to elaborate any further. He stared at me for a long moment, likely expecting me to say something, but when nothing was let from my lips, his mouth opened and spoke, “Okay. Then at least tell me why you’re so, uh, morose?”

“I’m allowed to feel morose from time to time,” I replied.

He sighed and slouched back down onto the sofa, his attention moving to the TV again. He stayed quiet for a few minutes until he confessed, “Mabel told me that you and Dipper kissed. I thought that would make you happy, that’s all.”

Of course she would tell him that, and of course Dipper would tell her that in the first place. It was odd what private details of his life he would give away so freely to his twin; he refused to tell her about his extraterrestrial submarine, but he was willing to tell her about how we kissed after a date. They have an odd dynamic that I will probably never fully understand.

A commercial break interrupted the thrilling action of the game show and I spoke quietly, “It did make me happy.”

Greg jolted up from his spot to look right at me with a big grin, “Really?! That’s incredible! You’ve been dreaming about that, right? Or maybe not. I don’t know. But that’s a big deal, Wirt! You two kissed and you’re back on good terms with each other and you love each other a whole lot and you’re planning another date, right? You gotta be the happiest guy in the whole universe!”

I thought about that for a second before letting out a short laugh, smiling slightly. “Yeah, I do feel pretty happy.”

He slid off the sofa and ambled over to me, pulling my cheeks to force my mouth into a bigger smile, “Then you shouldn’t be morose! Keep a smile on your face and you’ll be a-okay!”

I swatted at his hands and he laughed, bounding back to the sofa as the commercial break ended. There was no way he would understand that my anxiety over the idea of meeting Dipper’s parents was weighing heavily on me as though a rhinoceros had decided to sit on my shoulders and poke its horn into my head all day long. I hated the feeling of it as it was always there, whispering its dark scenarios into my imagination, and I couldn’t stop it. It preyed on my insecurities and bombarded me with my worst fears. Underneath that weight was the euphoric elation that was sweet rapture to my aching heart. The tragedy of having so many failed romances that ended almost as quickly as they began had made me bitter to the idea that I could ever feel the warm light of love radiating upon me again, yet Dipper came into my life again like a beacon calling out safe haven for my weary, wounded soul. Unfortunately, that euphoria was struggling to claw its way through the dark sea that I found myself drowning in. Anxiety at something that likely would be nothing at all gnawed persistently at what little resolve I had. I hated how it was burying my joy so deep within me that even Greg noticed it without trying.

“Oh,” Greg said as he turned his attention back to me, the game show nearing its ending. “You’re nervous about the birthday party, aren’t you?”

I shuddered, “Y—”

“It’s just a birthday party,” he cut me off, smiling. He began using his fingers to count off as he listed, “I’ll be there and Mabel will be there and Dipper’ll be there and a bunch of random people we sorta know will be there and—”

“Their parents will be there, Greg,” I snapped. If we were going to talk about this, then we should at least do it quickly. I turned the TV off and he let out a whine. “Their parents will be there and I don’t feel like I’m ready to meet them. That’s it. That’s why I’m so ‘somber’ and ‘morose.’ Are you happy now?”

He thought about this, sitting up on the sofa now that the television was black. “I’m happy most of the time, but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. You’re just nervous because you’ll be meeting Mr. and Mrs. Pines?”

“Of course I’m nervous about that!” I threw my hands up, feeling like no amount of explanation would be enough to drive into his skull why I was so nervous, but I was going to try anyway. “If I make a terrible impression, then they’ll hate me forever. Meeting the parents of the person you’re dating can be really scary and stressful if you don’t know what you’re in for, and I know next to nothing about Dipper’s parents! He says they’re nice, but I don’t know what that means. He says they’ll love me, but how does he even know that?”

Greg’s expression softened, which seemed so odd to me as I couldn’t remember a time when he had looked at me that way before. It caught me off guard a little. “You know they’re nice because Dipper and Mabel are nice.”

“How do you know that? How do any of us know that?” I dropped my head against the back of the chair and moaned. My resolve was fleeing from my body. No amount of explanation was going to be enough to get through his thick head. Solemnly I began to mutter to myself, “I just... I feel adrift upon a vast sea, not knowing where the waves will take me along these turbulent waters. There is a fog before me that appears endless and seeks to drive all sanity from me as I ponder my fate. Everything in front of me is black and bleak as it is laid forth beyond my reach, and though I extend my hand to grasp what hope may be out there, it touches nothing but the cold of the dark mist settling upon the water.”

“Uh... I don’t think it’ll be so bad,” Greg said, watching me curiously. “But if you’re that worried about it, then maybe just... not go? I mean, you don’t really need to go, right? You’re gonna do a birthday date with Dipper, right? So it shouldn’t be a big deal if you don’t go since you guys’ll be doing that together. I don’t think anyone’ll be mad at you, especially not Dipper. It’s just a party.”

“But I already promised him that I’d go,” I groaned, fingering the remote control idly. “I can’t just _not_ go! That’s poor party etiquette!”

“You had a panic attack over it, though,” he frowned.

I shook my head, “That wasn’t a panic attack. It was just anxiety and exhaustion.”

“Well, whatever it was, it scared me,” he said and I could hear worry leaking from his voice.

That worry pulled my attention squarely to him, taking in how his expression had changed to reflect that emotion. It was rare for him to be worried about anything at all, as he always looked on the bright side of everything and sought to be as optimistic as possible, but it appeared as though I must have truly scared him that evening. The emotion hidden behind his eyes unexpectedly wounded me.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” I chuckled lightly, getting up to join him on the sofa. I rested a hand to his back gently, keeping my focus on his expression. “I was just tired and anxious. I was pretending for Dipper that everything was all right, so when I came in and felt free from that, I just... dropped to the floor.” That wasn’t really the right word for it. I had slowly slid down to the floor, sitting on the rug as I was crushed by every horror scene that my brain could conjure up for me. Gravity eased me into that position as I let out my frustration in one long, exaggerated breath that must have sounded like a dying dinosaur’s final scream before being obliterated by an asteroid. “I actually forgot you were home. If I’d remembered that, then I probably would’ve just screamed into a pillow like a normal person.”

He stared at me quietly for a moment as he processed the words I spoke. Slowly, the worry that marred his usually genial expression slipped away to be replaced with an impish gleam. “Oooohhh, you were just being dramatic,” he snorted out a giggle.

“I’m not dramatic,” I scoffed, folding my arms over my chest.

“You’re always dramatic,” he laughed. “Always talking like, ‘I’m drowning in a sea of regrets as loneliness crests over my body like the tide’!” This drew from him a big laugh as I sat there, fuming a little. Thinking on it now, though, it was a pretty spot on impression and I kind of want to steal that line for later.

“I don’t talk like that all the time,” I mumbled before poking him in the side.

“Hey,” he giggled, squirming away, “poking isn’t fair!”

“Life’s not fair,” I grinned before getting up off the sofa and moving back to my chair. I turned the TV back on, the game show we had been watching now very much over as a crime drama’s dower background music loomed into our ears. “But you’re right. I should just tell Dipper that I’m not going to the party. If I do that, then I’ll stop being so ‘somber’ and ‘morose’.”

“Nah, you’re always pretty somber and morose,” Greg chuckled, “but at least it’ll be a normal amount of it.”

I smiled lightly, “I don’t know how you manage to keep so optimistic all the time. The country is falling apart, we’re rapidly destroying the planet, there’s injustice everywhere, yet you somehow remain positive despite it all.”

“Focusing on the negative means you can’t think about anything else,” he hummed. “Things are bad, but there are always constants, like how the sun will always rise even on a cloudy day!”

“And the inevitability of death,” I sighed.

“Yeah, and death!” He smiled widely at me, “When we die, our bodies become dirt, and that dirt becomes plants, and those plants feed animals, and those animals feed people, and it’s a big happy cycle!” Greg was beaming an impossibly bright smile in my direction and I instinctively looked away from it. Even the subject of death was a positive to him.

“Fine, yes, okay,” I grumbled.

“Yeah!” He dimmed his smile slightly and turned his attention back to the television, contorting his body back into the lazy sprawl that it had previously been in.

I looked back up to the television, grimacing at the program on the screen. I lifted the remote and tried to find something less grim to watch, Greg telling me to stop on a channel that was playing old cartoons from before either of us had been born. We watched TV for an hour or so, allowing the silly slapstick of the dated cartoons to break us from the somewhat serious conversation we had previously indulged in, before I finally got up, deciding I needed to go to bed. It was a work night, after all. We both agreed that we would be in our separate rooms for the rest of the evening, Greg going into his room to play games while I went to my own room and slept. I would contact Dipper tomorrow and confess that I wouldn’t be going to the party. Hopefully, Dipper would understand and not try to coerce me into going again. I had already told him that we didn’t need to rush this relationship, yet he was still acting like it needed to be rushed. His eagerness was sweet, but also far too exhausting for me. I dreaded the conversation, but it needed to be done.


	34. Chapter 34

Wirt asked if he could call me during my lunch break, and I of course agreed. I had an idea as to why he wanted to call me, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions. For all I knew, he just wanted to chat for no reason, but once I answered the phone, it was obvious that my assumption was correct. He wanted to talk about the party.

“I don’t want you to get upset,” he said carefully, “but I’ve thought about it a lot and—”

“It’s fine, Wirt,” I interrupted. “You don’t have to come.”

I could tell that I’d caught him off guard as he stammered a little, “R-really? You’re okay with it?”

“Yeah,” I said with a light laugh, “we’re going to be celebrating on our own together, so it’s absolutely okay if you don’t come to the party.”

He let out a long breath and when he spoke again, I could hear the relief in his voice, “I’m so glad you’re not upset!”

“Of course I’m not upset,” I chuckled. “I pressured you into coming, and that wasn’t fair of me at all. We’ll have an intimate birthday celebration, just the two of us, that way you don’t have to deal with my rowdy home during whatever festivities Mabel’s planning.”

“What could she possibly be planning? Games?” He seemed at a loss at what kinds of things my sister could plan for an adult birthday party.

“Trust me,” I laughed, “she can come up with the wildest ideas for literally any occasion. The only certainty is that there’s definitely gonna be karaoke. It’s not a Pines party without karaoke!” I could almost hear him shudder on the other end of the line. For a guy who was used to performing in front of people, it was odd that the idea of karaoke made him cringe. He probably had a good reason for not liking karaoke, such as a bad prior experience. I picked up my fork and started eating my lunch now that it seemed like the crux of our conversation had passed. It was just leftovers, so I wasn’t exactly excited about eating it, but my stomach was demanding food to fill it.

“Then, um,” he started slowly, “why don’t you tell me what you’d like for us to do, since I won’t be going to the party?”

I ruminated on this for a bit while I ate. There wasn’t really anything big that I wanted to do, but this would be the first time ever that I’d be celebrating my birthday as an individual instead of with Mabel in tow. The idea of celebrating without her felt foreign, even though there were times in my life when I’d thought about it. We’ve shared a lot of things in our lives together, and birthdays are the biggest thing that we shared together. My mind was blank even though I was searching hard for something concrete. There just wasn’t anything I could think of; everything I that came to mind was something that I could picture Mabel being there for.

I sucked in a deep breath, and carefully confessed, “I don’t know. We’ve never had a birthday apart from each other. I can’t think of anything at all.”

“You’ve never thought about it before?” I could clearly hear his surprise.

“Maybe once or twice, but mostly no. We always celebrate together, me and Mabel, so I don’t really know what I’d want to do without her there to celebrate with.” It felt so strange admitting that truth to him.

He was silent for a second before he let out a gentle laugh, “That makes sense. You two are very close. Well, if you get an idea, just let me know, okay? But, um, I have an idea for our next date activity, if you’ll hear it.”

“Yeah, sure,” I chuckled, glad that the subject changed.

“Well, uh, I’m not sure it really counts as a ‘date activity,’ but... I need a vacation, and I was wondering if you’d want to tag along.”

“What?” I was taken aback by this. He wanted to take me on vacation with him? Admittedly, I hadn’t been on a proper vacation in a long time, but I didn’t know what to think about my first vacation in so long being the two of us alone somewhere.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere fancy,” he said quickly. “I just haven’t had a vacation in a while... and Greg is driving me a little bit bonkers. I need some time to be away from my house and my job.”

“Understandable,” I hummed. “So where are you planning on going?”

“So, I... I-I’m renting a cabin for a week out on Crescent Lake—”

“You’re going to California?”

He laughed, “What? No! Crescent Lake here in Oregon!”

“O-oh yeah... the one here... in Oregon...” My ears immediately began to burn from my embarrassment. I was thinking about the Crescent Lake in California, since it was due east from Piedmont and I knew friends from school who would go camping out there sometimes. For all my knowledge at the time, it was the only Crescent Lake in the world, but now I felt like an idiot. There had to be at least one Crescent Lake in every state, just like how almost every town in the country had a Main Street. “S-so, when... when is that? You know, so I can take the time off?”

“The week after your birthday party,” he said. He was smiling; I could hear it in his voice. I faintly wondered if he was taking some delight in my embarrassment. “I already made the reservation for the cabin earlier this week, but I wanted to see if you were interested in joining me. It can be both a date and our private birthday celebration, if that’s okay with you.”

There wasn’t really any need for me to think too hard on making a decision about this. I had no idea that this was something I wanted to do or even an option at all, but now that the option was presented to me, it was everything that I wanted. I was already picturing it in my head, the two of us enjoying the outdoors together, having breakfast on the cabin’s porch as we watch the sunrise, going fishing on the lake after breakfast, going for a hike in the forest in the afternoon, maybe even encountering a cryptid in the woods... Yes, this was absolutely what I wanted to do for my birthday! “Yeah... y-yes! I’d love to go with you! We’ll, uh...” I looked at my half-eaten lunch and decided that I’d just finish it later, “I’m going to go ask my boss if I can take the time off right now! I’m sure she’ll say yes!”

“Dipper, hold on,” Wirt laughed on the other end, “there isn’t a rush! It’s your lunch break and you should enjoy it.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, relaxing back into my seat at the lunch table. He was right, but I still felt like I needed to do it ASAP, just so I could get it out of the way. I could only imagine the look on Mabel’s face when she learned that I was going to be spending a week’s vacation with Wirt. Would it be jealousy mixed with excitement? It didn’t matter, because this was all I could have ever dreamed of!

“We can talk more about it later, all right? I should probably get off the phone now, though. I have to at least _pretend_ like I’m doing my job today,” he chuckled lightly.

“O-oh, yeah, I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I said though I honestly wanted to talk to him more.

“It’s fine,” he said, and I got the impression that for the first time ever, he actually meant it. “I’ll text you the dates after we hang up and send you the info on the cabin when I get home. For now, though, you just focus on eating lunch before you ask to get that time off.”

“I will, don’t worry,” I smiled lightly, though I knew he wouldn’t see it. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Of course,” he said sweetly. “Goodbye, Dipper.”

“Bye,” I said quietly as I heard the other end go silent.

The rest of my lunch went by in a haze as I thought about every possible activity I could do with Wirt. We could rent a boat, roast marshmallows over a fire, play board games by candlelight, go stargazing... I searched on my phone for information about the lake and liked everything that I saw in the search results. This seemed exactly up both of our alleys. Wirt could enjoy the solitude, reading books and relaxing, and I could go investigate the forest for any signs of weirdness, since much of the Pacific Northwest is known for its cryptids and strange happenings. Maybe I could finally make contact with Bigfoot or even catch a glimpse of a visiting UFO!

It was a cinch to get the time off I needed to go on this trip with Wirt, and later that evening he sent me the information he promised. The lake in question was a few hours away for both of us, and the cabin he rented looked gorgeous! Throughout the weeks leading up to the vacation, we discussed plans for the trip, refining details and all of that. We talked about whether we should take two cars or drive up together, ultimately deciding to drive up together so we could shove as much as we could into the back of my truck. Wirt was of the opinion that we should make a detailed itinerary for each day, but I learned a long time ago that making too detailed of a list could only create trouble. There was only one thing that we both agreed that we definitely wanted to do, and that was rent a boat for a singular day of fishing. Otherwise, we made a loose list of things each of us wanted to do, either together or separately, that we could pick and choose to do on any given day. We’d drive up on Sunday morning and not leave until Friday evening. I couldn’t believe that this was actually something we were going to do together.

“You guys are really gonna go camping together?” Mabel said, awe in her tone. “Wirt was all upset about meeting our parents, but he’s willing to do this kind of step? I don’t get it, but good for you both!”

“It’s not like it’ll be the first time we’ve spent the night together,” I laughed. It was our usual Friday evening call after I had agreed to going on vacation with Wirt, and there was no way I couldn’t tell Mabel about this development, especially since it was going to be right after our birthday extravaganza. “The cabin he rented has two bedrooms, so I doubt that we’ll be sleeping in the same room at all the whole week.”

“Ooohh, that makes sense,” she mused. “I bet he decided to ask you to go because he felt obligated to fill up that extra bedroom.”

“I was thinking that, too,” I hummed. “Whatever the reasoning is, I’m glad he asked me to go. I have a ton of time off to use, so I might as well use it, right?”

“All that time off you were saving up to go die in the ocean.” The way she said it made it hurt more than I think she intended it to.

“Yeah, I know. I’m an idiot,” I whined. “I’ve apologized a million times now.”

“I know, but I still like making you feel bad about it,” she giggled.

“Don’t worry, I still feel _plenty_ bad about it,” I murmured.

“So what all are you gonna do out there in the wilderness?” Her curiosity felt genuine. “Like... fishing and hiking or whatever?”

“I was thinking of playing video games the whole time,” I grinned.

She laughed a little, “That’s exactly the opposite of what you’re gonna do! You’re gonna look for Bigfoot, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” I sang, “or maybe not!”

“Oh, that’s a definite yes! Make sure to grab pics if you meet him. I bet he’s very friendly and just likes being alone in the woods!”

“I’ll make sure to be extra polite if we meet him,” I chuckled lightly. “Who knows, maybe I can convince him to have tea with us!”

“That sounds quite delightful,” she said, putting on a British accent. “Oh, but I thought you don’t like tea.”

“Wirt does, so if he wants to have a tea party, there’s no way that I’d say no.”

“Aww, you really love him a lot, don’t you!” I could sense the light of her smile all the way from Piedmont.

“I do,” I said quietly, feeling a bit embarrassed. “A-anyway, even if we don’t seen Bigfoot or a UFO or anything supernatural, I’m sure we’re going to have a great time regardless.”

“Of course you guys are,” she said as I heard her rummaging around in the background. I didn’t really care what she was doing, but whatever it was she was up to was definitely making a racket. “But Wirt’s absolutely not coming to the party, right?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “I’m pretty sure Greg will be showing up, but it seems like Wirt is serious about not wanting to come.”

“There are going to be lots of other opportunities for him to meet our parents, so don’t worry about it!” She slammed a door very loudly and made a surprised noise, “The best time’ll probably be for Thanksgiving, since we’re gonna crash your house for that, too!”

This was the first I’d heard about this, which prompted me to cry out, “You’ve already decided that?!”

“You know it, bro-bro!” She cackled maniacally, “Your big fancy house is gonna be our destination for every holiday from now on!!”

I groaned loudly, “I should’ve expected that, honestly.”

“I still dunno why you bought such a big house,” she hummed, the volume of her voice dropping. It sounded like she stopped doing whatever it was that was so loud on her end, the ambient noise being low voices and music coming from her TV. “Isn’t it lonely out there?”

“You know I always wanted to live in a haunted house,” I laughed lightly, “but honestly the amount of noise the ghosts make downstairs can be really annoying. I don’t ever feel like I’m alone, so going on a little trip with Wirt might be exactly what I need in order to finally get some peace and quiet.”

She hummed thoughtfully, “If that’s your story, then sure.”

“It was cheap and haunted,” I shrugged, “there’s no way I was gonna pass up on such a great deal! Plus, it’s here in Gravity Falls and close to where I work. It’s wins all around!”

“Kinda like destiny that you’re there.”

“Not so much destiny as luck,” I replied.

“I dunno, you’ve gotta have crazy luck to have so much good stuff fall in your lap,” she laughed. “I mean, you even got back together with Wirt. That sounds _way_ more like destiny than luck.”

“If that’s what you wanna call it, then sure, it’s destiny.”

She made a smug noise in victory, “It’s absolutely destiny!”

We chatted for a bit longer, fluidly changing topics as we usually did, not adhering to any logic in where our conversation moved. We somehow got onto the subject of bears for fifteen minutes before she decided that it was getting late and she needed to rest. I felt like it was a bit earlier for bed, so once we’d hung up, I started putting together a list of provisions we’d need for our lakeside vacation. This would be the first time I’d ever gone on vacation with someone I was dating, and I was beginning to feel a little nervous. It likely wouldn’t be a big deal, but Mabel implied that this was somehow a very big deal. I tried not to let that get to me. It was going to be a pleasant getaway for both of us, especially after having to endure whatever madness Mabel had planned for our birthday party. It was looking like the end of summer was going to be interesting this year.


	35. Chapter 35

Beautiful mountains charged skyward in the distance, glistening with snowy white caps as the afternoon sun glinted brightly across calm, blue water, her rays like strands of golden hair striking between fluffy white clouds to reveal the impossible blue of the heavens above. To label it as majestic did not fully do the scenery justice. Surrounding us was the gentle cacophony of the forest, birds singing their simple melodies to herald our arrival while a warm summer breeze allowed the leaves in the trees to waltz to the music of the natural world. Nearby, the gentle waves of the lake splashed daintily against the lakeshore, clacking against the wood of the short dock that jutted into the water and the stern of a little fishing boat that was partially beached next to the dock. The sounds of man were invisible here. Everything was peaceful and in harmony with the world.

The drive to this beautiful location was simple enough, as Dipper and I passed the time by chatting, listening to music, and taking a singular pit stop to refuel both the truck and our bellies. We had spent the weeks before this trip preparing. I relied on Dipper quite a bit since I wasn’t familiar with what we would need for this kind of vacation. As I’ve said before, my usual vacations involved staying at home and doing nothing. Planning for a trip like this was new territory for me. Thankfully, the cabin had proper plumbing and electricity, a washer and dryer for our clothes, internet to keep us abreast of what was going on in the world, and other amenities that a normal home would have, which meant that we didn’t need to pack too much clothing and could save money by cooking our meals in the kitchen. We weren’t going to be roughing it at all.

The cabin itself was cozily rustic from the outside, looking like a smaller version of Dipper’s home. The white rocks of the gravel driveway shined under the brilliant sunlight as we stood there, in awe of the structure and its woodland setting. The front of the cabin had a small concrete porch that was flanked by beautiful flower beds and shrubbery that gave the exterior color to make it stand out from the green-and-brown background of the woods surrounding it. On the side of the home was a carport and through it we could see a small shed sitting near the tree line in the backyard. Though we were curious to see what was back there, we first needed to get inside the house. The front door was painted rust red and a half-moon shaped window gave us only a glimpse of the interior as we entered the code for the keypad that the owner of the home had given us. Though there were large windows on both levels of the cabin, sheer draperies gave privacy from those who would want to snoop inside.

Once the front door was opened, we were treated to a magnificent interior. Though the outside of the home looked rustic and timeless, the inside was designed as a very modern home. The construction of it implied that this property was recently built and not renovated like how Dipper’s had been. It was an open concept home, with everything being centralized to the great room on the ground floor. The ceilings were high and the tall windows let in so much light despite how we had yet to turn on any lamps. From where we stood by the front door, we could peer directly across towards the kitchen at the back of the home, a large island bar separating the grand living area from it, and next to the kitchen was a small yet beautiful dining area. The great room itself had a large television situated over the mantle of a wood-burning fireplace built of gorgeous stonework. To our right was a half-bathroom, the exterior wall of it the beginning of a wide wooden staircase that led directly to a large loft area. It seemed like this home would have been three bedrooms, but the third bedroom was turned into the loft. Dipper bounded up the stairs to see what was on the second floor, and I followed after. At the top of the stairs, we were greeted by a recreational area containing a foosball table, a dart board, a billiards table, and a small bar in the corner. Extending to our left and right were the two bedrooms described in the information I had been given. The right side had two doors, one leading to a bedroom with a view of the front yard and the other being a door to the guest bathroom. On the left side was only one door and I assumed that was the master bedroom.

However, what grabbed my attention were neither the bedrooms nor the recreational area, but instead it was what I saw right ahead of me. Beyond the recreational amenities of the loft were wide windows with no window dressings at all, and at the center of the windows were French doors that led to a large balcony that floated above the trees. Dipper had already decided to check out the games in the loft, but I moved towards the doors, flinging them open to look out over the scenery. The balcony extended from one end of the house to the other, and there was a smaller door that allowed access to this area from the master bedroom. A small table with two chairs was situated to take in the view of nature surrounding us and the shimmering blue of the lake. I rested my hands against the wooden railing of the balcony and sucked in a deep breath as the gentle wind blew softly against my face. On the water’s surface, far out from our location, I could see boats on the crystalline waters as vacationers enjoyed themselves on this hot summer day. I could picture myself sitting at the table on the balcony in the morning, drinking tea and enjoying a light breakfast as the pastel colors of the morning sky reflected themselves in the clear waters of the lake.

Dipper joined me soon enough and we both watched the world beyond the balcony quietly for a few minutes. Eventually, we reluctantly trudged back downstairs to grab our stuff from the truck, dragging in groceries and fishing supplies and luggage. Dipper suggested that I should claim the master bedroom, since I was the one paying the most money for this adventure, but I declined. I could survive well enough in the smaller room, which faced the northeast. I wanted to be awakened by the sunrise so I could start my day well each morning. I could tell that he wasn’t thrilled about my decision, but agreed to it nonetheless.

We finally investigated the backyard once we had filled the inside of the house with our things. Dipper thought to store the fishing rods in the shed we had spotted when we’d arrived, so we had to go outside and see what was there. Between the kitchen and the dining area was a backdoor with a large window that was covered by a sheer curtain. We opened it and found ourselves under the second floor balcony. In this area were a hammock and a porch swing tucked neatly underneath the wooden slats from above, a little table situated near enough to both for easily reaching a drink or a book from it. There was also a large outdoor poker table that was tucked near the wall the separated the kitchen from the outside. This area was all concrete, and the concrete extended a little further to a patio area which had a grill and a table and a few chairs. At the end of the patio was whimsical stonework that led slightly further from the home and ended to circle around a fire pit where low benches outlined the pit cleanly. More of those stones snaked their way towards the shed. The door of the shed had a note attached to it reading: “Please use whatever you’d like, but return all used items in good condition to where they originally came from. You will pay for and replace all damaged or lost items.” Dipper opened the door to find that there were already fishing rods inside, along with some pool toys and life jackets. We decided that we would still use the rods we’d brought so we wouldn’t risk damaging the ones that the owner provided.

Our next place to investigate was the lake itself and the small dock that we had access to. We followed the dirt path that left from the edge of the fire pit area and soon planted our feet on the small wooden dock. Dipper took the tarp off the fishing boat and made sure that it looked good. It appeared to be a typical fishing boat, with a small motor and oars for if the motor stopped working. The boat wasn’t entirely in the water; the bow of it was nestled against the fine sand of the short, artificial beach that the homeowner created as a recreational accent. Dipper inspected it from bow to stern, decided that it was good, and we trekked up towards the house, admiring the back of it as we made our return. It appeared that I had made a good decision in renting this property for the week.

That first evening was mainly us orienting ourselves to the cabin and relaxing on the comfy sofa in the great room while watching mindless television. We indulged in a simple dinner as the sun rested on the other side of the horizon, her final rays beaming dreamily through the high windows before she faded completely from view. We resumed our television watching after dinner before we settled in for the night in the rooms we had picked to sleep in, both of us fairly exhausted from the long drive. I fell asleep to the orchestra of nighttime insects serenading the moon as he shined his delicate white light upon the still water of the lake and the lush greenery of the forest. Beyond the noises of nature, everything was peaceful, and for the first time in quite a while I fell asleep quickly and easily in the stillness of this tranquil location.

Our first morning at the cabin began a routine that lasted the entire week. Each morning, I would awaken to the first rays of the sun as she shined her light into my bedroom, and I greeted her quietly from the window before I went on to take a shower and get dressed. Once I was cleaned and clothed, I would brew tea and make breakfast for the both of us while I waited for Dipper to blearily tromp down the stairs in his pajamas to join me for our morning meal. Every morning he commented in his hoarse morning voice on how I was always cleaned and dressed far too early in the morning, especially for a vacation day, and I would simply smile at his assertion before offering him breakfast. His bed-head look and the squinting expression he wore each morning made me want to pepper his sleepy face with kisses, but I never did. Instead, we would sit at the dining room table and decide what our activity for that day would be, followed by Dipper getting cleaned and dressed and ready for whatever it was we decided upon doing.

The first full day of our vacation had us hiking, my attire for this outing surprising Dipper. He apparently thought I would go hiking in slacks, a sweater vest, and dress shoes; instead, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and gym shoes, like any sensible person going on a hike in the woods in late summer. He made a point in reminding me that I dressed nicely for our adventures in Gravity Falls, and I reminded him that I was also a dumb teenager back then who made some rather poor decisions. Dipper tried to go off the trail and explore deeper into the forest, having some kind of cryptid in mind that he wished desperately to find, but I managed to keep him focused on staying on the trail. I had a feeling that if any terrifying monsters were in the woods, they wouldn’t be roaming around in daylight on well-traveled hiking paths meant for tourists. We returned without encountering anything paranormal or supernatural, and we enjoyed a candlelight dinner as his birthday celebration. It wasn’t grandiose, but it was obvious that he loved it.

The next day we took the boat out and did a little fishing, and when we both became sufficiently bored of doing that, we took the boat back to our little dock and relaxed inside for the rest of the day by watching TV. In the evening, though, we decided to use the fire pit. Our dinner that night was hotdogs we cooked unevenly over the open flame that were paired with our dessert of s’mores made with mostly burnt marshmallows. We told stories around the campfire, Dipper indulging in the creepier fair while I told more sedate stories. Of course, he also told tales of his own real life adventures, which I took with a grain of salt. Though I could believe some of his tall tales, others were a bit unbelievable despite how he insisted that it was all true.

The following day was rainy and cold, so we stayed inside and lit a fire in the fireplace. We listened to soft music and read books. Dipper was reading on his tablet about alien abduction cases, sometimes telling me the gory and creepy details whenever something caught his interest. Meanwhile, I had brought a handful of vintage books that I had recently acquired and was reading an old hardback collection of translated Hungarian folk tales that was published in the 1960s. To counteract Dipper’s strange tales of alien abductions, I would recite a few of the shorter fairy tales to balance out the weird with something simple. What warmed my heart was how much he seemed to enjoy my impromptu storytelling. Thinking back, I remember this day the most from that vacation, as it is one of my favorite moments with Dipper during that trip. The gentle thrum of the rain against the windows paired well with the crackle of the fireplace and the gentle classical music I had selected for our lazy day. We only had a few lights turned on, mainly so I could see the pages of my book since Dipper could read well enough on his tablet, and that lighting makes the memory of this day so warm. Nothing exciting happened that day, but it was a magnificent day nonetheless.

Rain continued to sprinkle from the sky the next morning, but the afternoon was sunny and the rain left the world feeling cool and refreshing against the heat of the sun above. Dipper tried to convince me to go swimming in the lake with him, which I didn’t really want to do. He joked about expecting me to have brought a vintage swimsuit from the 1920s, and that was what provoked me enough to get my swim trunks out and join him in the water. The water was cold from the rain, but it felt good under the hot sunlight. Dipper had pulled out a few of the toys and we got into a foam noodle fight, laughing and having a wonderful time together. I felt like a kid again. It was like I’d forgotten how fun it could be being silly and playing in a lake. I had a stray thought to how Greg would have enjoyed it, but that thought bubble burst when a beach ball collided with my head. We ended the day warming up by the fire pit and Dipper grilled hamburgers for us. It took little time for my body to regret all of that activity, and I went to sleep feeling sore everywhere.

Our final full day of vacation cabin life was spent lounging outside on the patio, reading and enjoying each other’s company. We had prepared snacks and drinks, passing chip bags between each other and forgoing lunch entirely. When the sun was too high and too hot, we moved our location underneath the balcony, quietly reading until Dipper suggested we try out the poker table, since it was there. Playing poker with two people, however, wasn’t very exciting, and as the day came to a close, we enjoyed our final dinner together and finished our vacation by trying our luck at the gaming facilities in the loft. It turns out that neither of us knows how to play pool, and we still don’t know how to play. When billiards had frustrated us enough, we resorted to playing foosball and darts before eventually going bed.

The next day was Friday and the end of our vacation together. We had woken up later than we wanted to, and we had a long drive ahead of us. We gathered up all of our belongings, made sure that everything we used was cleaned and put away, and triple-checked to make sure we had gotten everything that we owned. Once everything had been dumped into the back of Dipper’s truck, I locked up the house using the keypad for the last time that week, and we headed back to Gravity Falls where my poor, lonely sedan was waiting in Dipper’s garage for me. Our drive back was spent in much the same way as it had been on the way to the lake. We listened to music, chatted about the trip, and made a singular pit stop to refuel both the truck and our bellies. When we arrived at Dipper’s home, the sun was falling towards the cliffs that bordered Gravity Falls. It would be dark by the time I returned home, and I quietly feared what kind of mess I would witness when I arrived there. Leaving Greg alone in my house for this long could only end in tragedy, but the time I spent away made me almost forget about that entirely. Truthfully, I needed that time to not worry about anything at all, and I had just spent an entire week without worries dancing in my head. I felt so calm out there, alone with Dipper and the tranquility of nature. Now that I was returning to my normal life and my normal problems, I could feel myself tensing up as my mind slung its worries back to the front of my brain.

I arrived home late that evening, and when I entered my house it seemed that my worries were unfounded. Greg had kept the house clean. He’d taken the trash out on trash day. The dishes had been washed and weren’t piled up in the sink. He didn’t greet me because he was working night shift that evening, and I was a bit glad of it. It meant that I could drag in my luggage and the leftover food items I’d taken without having to tell him about the trip. I was tired. When I felt like I had done all that I could, I went into my familiar bedroom, put on my comfiest pajamas, and slid into bed.

In summation, the trip was lovely!


	36. Chapter 36

After having a very lively birthday party the day before, I was definitely ready to drive out to a peaceful lake and not be anywhere near people ever again. The older I got, the more I felt like having a huge birthday party was completely unnecessary, but Mabel liked having big parties, so we kept having big parties. The party lasted late into the night, but I went to bed early in anticipation of having to wake up early to leave for Crescent Lake. Thankfully for Wirt, my parents sent me off without leaving the house, but Mabel came out to help us load the truck. I let Wirt move his car into my truck’s usual spot in the garage so it wouldn’t get too hot in the sun. That proved to be a wise idea because it got unseasonably hot that week, even with the one day when it rained.

That cabin, though, was absolutely stunning! I thought my house was picturesque, but this small cabin had an incredible view and was really charming. Wirt sure did pick out a great place to spend the week relaxing and recharging. We did some of what we wanted to do, which was hiking and fishing, but for the most part we just vegetated on the cabin property. I wanted so badly to tease Wirt about his clothing choices for a lakeside vacation, but he dressed appropriately for the most part. I didn’t even know he owned a pair of shorts, much less a pair of swim trunks, yet he had both! And it wasn’t vintage or vintage-inspired; he was wearing modern clothing and it looked so strange to me. He confessed later that his t-shirts and shorts were just his pajamas, but even then I was surprised he didn’t wear thermal underwear to bed. Maybe I was just being a moron this whole time.

When we got to the cabin and got ourselves sorted out, I’d expected him to take up the master bedroom since he was the one laying down the big bucks for us to be staying in such a nice house, but instead he took the smaller bedroom. I wanted to protest so badly, but he said something about wanting to greet the sun in the morning. At first, it didn’t really catch my attention, but when I thought about it after setting myself up in the master bedroom, I realized that the way the house was oriented made it so that the sunrise would be best seen from the front of the house, and the master bedroom faced the back of the house. I noticed this about his house, too, where he set up the guestroom to face the front of the house, towards the west, and his bedroom was facing the east. Even away from home, he oriented himself to his favorite cardinal direction to maximize his enjoyment of the sunshine.

We got into a bit of a routine after that, where Wirt would wake up way too early for a man on vacation, take a shower, get dressed, and make breakfast for us. I refused to wake up early, so I would stumble downstairs and remark that he was too much of an early bird, and then we’d share breakfast together. In the mornings, before we decided what to do, he would be dressed like how I was used to: slacks and a button-up shirt and a light sweater. I never looked down at his feet, but I assumed he wore slippers since his feet made that shuffling sound that feet make when wearing slippers. Only after we decided what to do would he change into clothes more fitting for outdoor activities. He’d do his wardrobe change while I took a shower and got dressed after breakfast. I feel a bit like a slob compared to how perfectly dressed Wirt seems to be all the time, but Wirt’s never made comments on my appearance at all.

The Monday while we were at the cabin was the actual date of my birthday, and we had a small celebration at dinnertime after we relaxed from an invigorating hike through the woods. I don’t know how he managed to keep it a secret from me, but he brought a cake that he’d made himself. It was a white cake covered in chocolate frosting and he placed candles on it to form the shape of a pine tree. It was very thoughtful of him, and the cake was delicious. How he managed to sneak a whole cake by me and have it somehow survive the long journey to the cabin baffled me, but I was glad that he’d done it!

Truthfully, every day we spent together during that trip is perfect in my memory. The week went by so quickly, yet time felt so slow while we were there. I kind of wanted to stay there forever, trapped in that moment, but wishing for something like that is not only impossible but also dangerous. I’m trying to think if there are any days that specifically stood out for me, which is hard when every day was like a dream come true.

Well, there’s one moment that I should properly document...

On the day when we went fishing, we had ended up not catching anything. Wirt said to me before we went out on the water that the fish might not come by with the rain soon to come... or something like that. It was more poetic from his mouth. It turned out that he was right and the fish weren’t nibbling at .all that day, but that’s not the moment I’m trying to get to. After fishing, we returned to the cabin in defeat, bested by the fish and, apparently, the omen of rain that Wirt predicted. Without having anything else to do, we decided to start a fire in the fire pit and tell stories while roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over the flame. Wirt didn’t seem too interested in telling stories, but I told a few ghost stories to get the mood going. The sun hadn’t fully set yet, so whatever spooky stories I told wouldn’t have had a big impact anyway. He was, of course, seated so that he could fully take in the sunset and I sat near him, enjoying how the light of the fire warped the shadows on his face in the strange light of late afternoon.

“You’ve gotta tell at least one story,” I said, grinning wide.

“But I don’t have any sensational stories to tell,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ve already told the scariest of my stories from the Unknown.”

“Then what about a story from one of those books you brought,” I hummed. He may have been able to sneak in the cake, but I saw quite clearly the large tote bag he’d dragged in with him that was filled with books. A good number of them were books of folk tales and short stories, which meant he could easily go back into the house and pick one out to read.

He laughed lightly, still shaking his head, “You don’t want to hear a fairy tale, do you?”

I shrugged, “I do if it’s you telling it.”

He pondered this for a moment, his eyes drifting to the fiery hues of the sky. “I... think I have a story to tell you,” he spoke slowly, sounding a bit unsure of himself.

I smiled gently, “I’d love to hear it.”

He glanced back to me for a moment, his expression odd in the changing light of the fire and the quickly fading sunlight. I gave him a reassuring smile and a nod, and he turned to look at the fire, sucking in a sharp breath. When he finally spoke, this was the story he told me:

> Long ago, when the world was young, the Sun was married to the Morning Star. They were very happy and loved each other dearly, and soon they had a shining Golden Son together. Sadly, the Morning Star’s light eventually faded, leaving his wife and child alone.
> 
> The Sun found love again, and soon she married the Moon who followed after her in the sky every day. The Sun and the Moon were very happy and loved each other dearly, and soon they had a shining Silver Son together.
> 
> The Golden Son did not like the Silver Son and did not like his new father, the Moon. He missed true father, the Morning Star. He hated his mother for marrying the Moon.
> 
> One day, the Golden Son and the Silver Son became lost in a vast forest. There they had many trials to overcome before they could return home. The Silver Son, who loved his older brother dearly, tried to sacrifice himself for the Golden Son’s safety, and that act made the Golden Son realize that his anger was misplaced. The Golden Son saved his younger brother and they found their way home again.
> 
> Time passed and the Sun and the Moon allowed their children to live and grow among humanity. As he grew older, the Golden Son fell in love with a human. He told the Sun and the Moon that his lover was mortal, and they were very upset.
> 
> “Why would you love a human?” asked the Sun. “There are so many Stars in the Sky for you to betroth, yet you pick a mortal instead!”
> 
> The Moon said, too, “A human is not for you to choose. You are our son and should marry of the Sky!”
> 
> When all the Sky learned that the Golden Son loved a mortal, the Stars laughed at him and teased him for it. All but the Silver Son made mockery of the Golden Son. The Golden Son, saddened by the Sky rejecting him, wept golden tears into the Sea.
> 
> The Golden Son continued to spend his time with humanity, seeking to learn all he could about humans as he lived among them. His parents grew to understand that the Golden Son’s love was true, and eventually apologized for their harsh words.
> 
> However, the damage had already been done, and the Golden Son fled to the farthest land he could. There, he found the human he had loved before, but was conflicted. Should he pursue love with this mortal again? All in the Sky already ridiculed him for loving humans.
> 
> The Silver Son journeyed to find his brother and told the Golden Son that he should love who he wants without fear of the Sun or the Moon or the Stars, but the Golden Son still felt worry and fear. He knew that being angry with the Sun and the Moon was childish and wrong, but he worried that they would hate him after he rejected their apology before. The Silver Son said that their parents were not upset, but the Golden Son remained dismayed.
> 
> The Golden Son kept his feelings quiet, vowing to only be friends with the human he once loved. This plan did work for a time, but soon he found that this human still held love for him the same as the Golden Son did. They cherished their love together, but the Golden Son still feared his parents in the Sky.
> 
> Anxious and fearful of his parents, the Golden Son hid this knowledge from his human lover. He wanted to love this human without thinking of the Sun or the Moon or the Sky, but worry plagued him. He loved this human dearly and hoped they would be together until the human’s light faded. That was what the Golden Son wanted the most...

When Wirt reached that last sentence, his voice trailed and his eyes moved to focus on me. The sun was gone from the sky now and the fire left dancing shadows on his face, making it hard for me to read his expression. As the words of that story seeped into my brain while he told it, I realized that the story was about him. This was his roundabout way of telling me what happened between himself and his parents, and I was the human lover in the tale. His eyes searched mine, expecting me to say something. My mouth opened and I spoke quietly, “I think... that’s what the human lover would want most, too...”

A wave of relief washed over him, and his posture relaxed. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d tensed up while telling his story. “I’m sorry that story doesn’t have a proper ending,” he apologized.

“It’s a work in progress,” I smiled.

He nodded and looked back at the fire. “I think our hotdogs are burnt.”

I blinked, turning my attention back to the food we had cooking in the fire. I’d completely forgotten that that’s what we were doing. I pulled out the skewer that had my hotdog on it, finding it to be charred and inedible. I sighed, “It’s a good thing we have more of these.”

“Yeah,” Wirt chuckled, admiring his own blackened hotdog.

The rest of the evening went along well, though I kept thinking about that story he told. He told other stories, trying his best to remember some of the folk tales he’d read recently, but that first one has always stuck in my mind. It wasn’t a complete story, and it clearly was leaving out some key details that I would learn about later on, but it was a start. From context clues in his little fairy tale, it seemed like his parents weren’t happy to learn that Wirt wasn’t straight, which must have made the rift between them even larger. This story was far more complex than a simple fairy tale could encompass, but at least I had an idea as to what happened. I could ask for more details later when he felt more comfortable with telling me everything.

The rain that Wirt had predicted came the next day, prompting us both to relax inside. The rest of the vacation was us resting either inside or outside, no longer feeling the need to be adventurous in the great outdoors. That aura of calm, which I’d missed for such a long time, returned to claim us both, wrapping us in its comfort. I couldn’t have asked for more. All I wanted was to spend time with Wirt, even in quiet moments like these, and cherish every second that we were near each other. Our last big adventure at the cabin was swimming in the lake, and that was followed by relaxing inside, curled up together on the sofa and watching a movie on TV. We even spent an entire day outside, relaxing in lawn chairs and reading books. Each moment was so simple, but it all felt incredibly magical in how calm it was. It reminded me of the time we’d spent together when we were younger, back when we would spend an entire day doing nothing beyond being in each other’s company and delighting in the warm weather.

The evening before we had to leave, we played some of the games in the loft. We didn’t play for very long, since we needed to go to bed early. However, before we went to bed, I got up the courage to ask if Wirt wanted to sleep in the master bedroom with me, and to my surprise, he said yes. It felt groundbreaking at the time, that he actually accepted my offer despite how chaste it was. Nothing happened between us as we lay together in bed, beyond sharing a few light kisses and indulging in a bit of cuddling, yet it felt important while it was happening. It was also the first time I ever saw him in his pajamas, which is when I learned that he slept in gym shorts and a t-shirt. Nothing else was revelatory that night, other than it being the first time we had ever shared a bed together.

I think that contributed to why we both woke up a little late the next morning. Wirt had been waking up to the first rays of sunlight, but now that he was in a room facing the other direction, he woke up late. He still woke up before me, but I heard him get up and leave the bedroom. I stayed in bed for a bit longer before grabbing my glasses and sliding out of bed to check on him. He’d left the door open and I could see him sitting at the top of the stairs, looking out the windows at the sunrise. Quietly, I joined him and we both stared out the windows, the gauzy window dressings making the colors of morning look strange.

“I’m always amazed at how clear the sky here is,” he said softly.

I nodded a little, “Yeah, it’s nice to see clear skies when you’re not near a city.”

He shifted his position a little, moving his legs to get more comfortable, “Back in my hometown, there are factories everywhere, and when I was little I used to think that the smoke from the factories were clouds – that the factories were making clouds.” He let out a sad laugh, his eyes falling to look at his feet, “Visiting Gravity Falls was when I learned that the sky could actually be the vibrant blue color that it is on TV and in movies. The smoke from the factories makes the sky back home look dingy, even on cloudless days, but out here, where industry hasn’t touched the land so harshly, the sky is brilliant.” His head lifted, and he looked at me slightly, “It was the first time that the sky meant something to me.”

It finally clicked with me that the reason he’d wanted to badly to see the sunset and the sunrise with me when we were younger was because he’d never seen the sky without the haze of smog. He’d fallen in love with the sky, now that he knew its true color, while he was falling in love with me. This trip had given me a greater glimpse into his history, and it was growing more questions inside me. However, now that these things were bleeding out of him so freely, I didn’t feel like I needed to speculate on the deeper meaning of what he was saying. He was finally comfortable enough with me to tell me what he’d been hiding from me.

A light laugh left him and he shook his head as his gaze lowered again, “Back before we vacationed in Gravity Falls, I didn’t know that I lived in a dirty, industrial landscape, but now...” He let out a heavy sigh, “I used to love the trains that traveled through town; hearing the squeal of their wheels and the bellow of the horn brought me so much joy. Now when I see them, all I see is how filthy they are, covered in graffiti and filled with industrial products coming and going from the factories that muddy the sky. The water Greg and I nearly drowned in is dirty and polluted, filled with trash and who knows what else. I never noticed any of that filth until after I had seen scenery that was without the garbage and the hazy sky. It’s not like that here, and I think that’s why I wanted so badly to come back here. The waters here are cleaner than the rivers and lakes where I’m from. The air is fresh, without the faint odor of chemicals and smoke. Most of all, though, the sky is blue; truly and genuinely blue.”

I rested my hand on his back and kissed his temple, “I’m glad that I get to enjoy the sky with you.”

He leaned against me, his eyes having lifted towards the windows as the colors beyond the curtains faded slowly from warm pastels to bright blue. We stayed like that for a while, ignoring how the morning was fleeing us as we focused on simply existing within this quiet moment we were sharing. After a while, though, our bodies broke apart to create distance. Wirt headed towards the smaller bedroom to grab some clothes and take a shower, and I spent time sitting there, thinking. I don’t really remember what I thought about, but those thoughts had me rapt for a while before I finally got up and got ready to leave. Even though we got a later start than we wanted to, we didn’t rush ourselves, and eventually we got everything gathered up and crammed into my truck.

When I got home, I crashed on my bed, leaving everything in my truck. I was both exhausted and relaxed, which was a weird way to feel. My parents and Mabel had left while I was away, so the house was devoid of human activity beyond my breathing body. Even the ghosts were quiet, which was nice. I fell asleep on my bed like that, in my clothes and everything, and woke up the next morning convinced that the entire week had just been a very long dream. However, I had photographic evidence that it was real. My phone was filled with pictures I’d taken while we were gone, and I flipped through each one with a fond smile on my face. There’s one picture I like the most out of the bunch, and that’s a pic of Wirt relaxing by the fireplace on the rainy day, reading his book in the dim light. I’m looking at it right now and it makes me so happy. He’s wearing a light smile on his lips, as though he knew I was sneaking a picture of him despite his eyes being focused on his book, but what makes this pic of him stand out, even now, is that his smile holds none of its usual melancholy. He was truly happy in that moment, and I love this picture because of that.

I wonder if he remembers this picture...


	37. Chapter 37

At some point after our beautiful week together, Dipper asked if Greg and I wanted to join him and his family for Thanksgiving. It must have been in early November when he asked this, because I actually agreed to it. By then, we had gotten a lot more comfortable in our relationship. I found myself staying at his house over the weekends, regardless of whether or not we were playing DD&MD or going out on dates. The results of our vacation had proven that leaving my house in Greg’s hands wouldn’t end in returning to an inferno, so I felt more comfortable with letting Greg be home alone more often. I still wasn’t sure what Greg was doing in his bedroom, other than being annoying at odd hours, but he was paying rent and staying relatively quiet when I slept, which was all I had asked of him. I learned later on what he was doing in there, though I still don’t understand it, but at this point in the story it was still something I didn’t know and didn’t really care to know.

Throughout the months following Dipper’s birthday, he and I did quite a lot together, though none of it was flashy. We went out for a couple of proper dates, but for the most part we simply shared each other’s company. We binged television series that we were both curious to watch, we had a few movie marathons, and we cuddled a lot. There was so much cuddling and I was soaking in that gentle affection as though I were a parched desert in its seventh year of drought. During our vacation, we had slept in the same bed together one of the nights we were at the cabin, and now that that gate had been opened, I slept in Dipper’s bed more frequently which afforded me ample opportunity to spoon and be spooned.

All of that contributed to me finally feeling comfortable enough to accept his offer of joining his family for Thanksgiving. It would only be his immediate family, and it seemed that no other outsiders would be entering the fray. Dipper had finally told me more about his parents, beyond the vague information of them being “nice,” and it made me feel like I was ready to finally step onto the battlefield. I still hadn’t felt like telling Dipper much about my own parents yet, though I had given him a few hints here and there. Nothing outright, of course, but he seemed to like the challenge of trying to understand them through the hints I’d given him; he liked solving puzzles and cracking codes, so this was something he seemed to enjoy. I found myself quite liking his outlandish ideas and speculation, as none of it was harming anyone.

When Thanksgiving rolled around that year, Greg and I dressed in our Sunday finest for this special holiday celebration. Our parents had determined that out of all of the big holidays, Christmas should be the one that Greg and I try to journey home for every year. That year would be the first year since moving to Oregon that I would actually have to fly out east over Christmas and I wasn’t exactly excited for it, but for now I was going to enjoy Thanksgiving with Dipper and his family.

I gave a lot of thanks on that Thanksgiving Day for it going so smoothly. I could finally confirm that Mr. and Mrs. Pines were indeed very nice and incredibly friendly people. They were open and warm, and I greatly enjoyed their company. I could see how Dipper and Mabel each took from both of their parents, and we all found ourselves laughing and chatting comfortably around the dinner table as we gorged ourselves on turkey and stuffing and pie.

At the tail end of the day, while everyone was seated in front of the television to watch the football game, I had disappeared to relax upstairs. My social interaction meter had maxed out and I was feeling exhausted. I needed to be away from everyone, if only for a little while. I sat at the edge of Dipper’s bed, staring out the window at the gloomy November sky. It was going to snow soon; I could sense it. My eyes stayed focused on the clouds as they rolled by, hoping to witness the arrival of the first snowfall of the season.

A familiar voice said my name as I was seated there so quietly, and the sound of it startled me. “Wirt, are you okay?”

I turned to see Dipper lingering in the doorway. He looked concerned until I nodded and gestured for him to join me. Without hesitation, he moved from the doorway to the bed, sitting down next to me and looking out the window as well. He wrapped an arm around my waist, gently letting our bodies connect as the mattress sank under our weight.

“Do you remember,” I spoke softly, “back when we first sat here together? There was such a large gap between us... Now there isn’t a gap at all.”

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, “it feels like forever ago. We both were so nervous that day. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since then.”

“A year come March,” I stated. My eyes drifted to meet Dipper’s, my image reflected back to me in his glasses and in his eyes.

He became shy at our impromptu staring contest and blinked his focus away from me, looking out the window again. “Back then... I never thought about us being like this, you know? It seemed impossible.”

I nodded and followed his gaze back to the window and the gray clouds gathering darkly above us. “I had thoughts to it, but I’d already resigned myself to the idea of just being friends with you.”

He let out a tiny laugh, “We were so stupid... especially me.”

“You’re not stupid,” I smiled gently. “Although, I do kind of wonder what happened with that expedition.”

Dipper made a soft noise, taking his hand away so he could push his glasses up. “It should be heading out in a couple of weeks. I feel like I’ve finally come to terms with the possibility of my grunkles being gone for good, though.” He sighed, falling onto his back, the bed bouncing with the collision, “It’s been so long now that there’s no way they could’ve survived.”

Instead of waiting for the snow to fall, I joined in lying on the bed. My descent onto the bed was slower than Dipper’s, and I rolled onto my side so I could look at him properly. His eyes moved to glance at me and he smiled slightly.

“You can still have hope,” I said as I returned his smile.

His smile softened a little, “I know, but it’s kinda hard when everything is so uncertain.” He rolled onto his side to look at me, his glasses moving to an odd angle. He pulled the frames from his face and reached to place them on the nightstand, then returned his focus to me. We looked at each other silently for quite a while, the only noise being the television as it sounded calls for a football game that neither of us was interested in. Eventually, the space between us was erased as our lips met, sharing a delicate kiss. It wasn’t a long kiss or a deep kiss, but it didn’t need to be any longer or any deeper. I smiled lovingly at Dipper when the kiss had ended and he smiled similarly to me. It’s a small and simple moment that I remember so fondly and cherish so completely.

We eventually moved back into a seated position on the bed, Dipper having replaced his glasses on his face so he could see properly again, and we watched as the snow began its quiet descent from the sky. Our conversations were fluid and calm as the world slowly turned white. I’m sure that I uttered some poetic garbage, musing on how the sun inched closer to her yearly demise so that she could be reborn again on the solstice.

It was during this calm that he asked, “Do you wanna stay over for Christmas? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I wanted to at least ask.”

I gave him a somewhat sad smile, I think, and replied glumly, “Unfortunately, no. I haven’t been home for Christmas in years, and our parents really want me to visit this year.”

“Oh,” he said softly. “Well, I bet they’ll be really happy that you’re finally visiting them, but... how come you haven’t visited in so long?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him yet or not, though I did feel obligated to tell him at some point. “It’s far away,” was what I replied, as though that would be enough of an explanation.

“Yeah, airfare’s gotta be pretty expensive,” he said with a laugh. “They’ve gotta understand that, though, right?”

I nodded, “They do, but they feel like that’s not enough of a reason.”

“They must miss you a lot.”

Again, I nodded, but this time I didn’t say anything at all. My mom was very clear when they were here to help Greg move that she wished I would visit more often. At this point, I had not visited home in so many years that I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been home. As I ruminated on this, I realized that the last time I had been home was the day when I moved out for good.

“Wirt,” Dipper said quietly, trying to get my attention now that I had been silent for so long. “You never actually told me the full story.”

“I kind of did,” I said, though I knew I honestly had not.

“A fairy tale account of what happened isn’t the full story,” he chuckled, “though I did like your little fairy tale.”

I sighed heavily, knowing that it was time that I told him the details of my past with my family. I don’t think I told him everything at the time, but I gave him a clean summary of key details. I told him more clearly about how upset I was for years after my mom remarried, and how I spent a lot of time hating Greg for something he had no control over. I told him about my relationship with Sara and how that eventually led to me finally admitting to myself that I was definitely gay. I explained how I was outed shortly after returning from that summer in Gravity Falls when rumors about my sexuality had spread through the school and the town, and how that created an even larger division between myself and my parents. I revealed a lot to Dipper that day, more than I had planned on doing. Once my mouth had opened, the words spilled out of me like a waterfall.

He hummed a little, “Okay, that fairy tale makes a lot more sense now.”

I laughed lightly at that, “It was a pretty decent summary, wasn’t it?” I had just finished summarizing everything up to before I graduated from college, right when I decided to move to Oregon. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I had spoken so much without interruption and the moment had left me a bit exhausted. My social interaction meter had stagnated at its maximum as I orated about myself so keenly.

“Yeah,” he chirped, “so that means we’re to the part in the fairy tale where your parents tried to apologize, but by then you’d already decided you were gonna move out here to get away from them?”

“By that point, I’d already sort of cleared things up with my step-dad,” I continued, “but Mom never really apologized. She’s apologized now, which is why I was okay with them both coming out here with Greg, but for a long time it was... tense. They’re a lot more supportive now, but their style of support is a bit too aggressive for my tastes.”

“So... you stay away from them because they smother you?”

“Essentially,” I shrugged. “They went from one extreme to the other once they were both on the same page. However, now I’ve got to deal with the next confession I have to bring them.”

He nodded knowingly with a hum, “The fact that you’re pagan, right?”

I immediately looked at him with the most confused expression I’ve ever worn in my entire life. “I’m what?”

His eyes darted away and he laughed nervously, “So... you’re... not... pagan?”

There was a beat of silence before I burst into laughter, “No, of course I’m not pagan! Whatever gave you that idea?”

He stammered, trying desperately to find the right words, “I just... Y-you know, the way you talk sometimes, a-and... weather predicting and... I-I don’t know, I just thought... that...”

I shook my head, grinning widely at this baffling assumption Dipper had made, “I mean, my parents will probably think that when I finally tell them I’m not Christian anymore, but I’m definitely _not_ pagan.” Dipper had been so certain to his speculation on my religious affiliation that he had already assumed it to be fact. It was just a quirk of his personality that I had to get used to.

On this day he was wearing his warm, furry cap and he was now pulling it over his face to hide his embarrassment from me. I continued to laugh, shaking my head. When he finally had the courage to speak again, he whimpered a little apology while I patted his back gently. He stammered out a string of apologies before asking quietly, “Are you sure they’re going to be mad when you tell them that?”

I pulled my hand away from his back and settled it in my lap, “I’m honestly not sure. We went to church a lot growing up, but once I was in high school, they stopped forcing me to get up early on Sunday. As far as I know, they still go to church every Wednesday night and Sunday morning.”

“I think they’ll understand,” Dipper said brightly. “If you’re honest with them, I’m sure they’ll be okay with it.”

“Maybe,” I said quietly, “but I won’t know until Christmas.”

Dipper laughed lightly, “Religion is such a weird thing, anyway. Like... I don’t think of myself as being religious, but I believe that there are creatures with godlike abilities out there because I’ve seen them with my own eyes, like Bill Cipher and the Axolotl.”

“An axolotl?” I wasn’t aware that axolotls were so godly.

He grinned but didn’t elaborate, “I feel like having something to believe in has more power over a person’s morality than religion alone does, like how I believe in the fundamentals of science and math and all of that.”

I shrugged, “I’m pretty sure both of our parents would raise an eyebrow if either of us proclaimed belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing axolotl.”

“Careful or the Axolotl will hear you,” Dipper whispered before bursting into laughter.

Thankfully, the subject changed as we stayed in the bedroom, uninterrupted for a long time. We were later called to by Mabel, who wanted to get a family photo to commemorate the day for her latest scrapbook, so we wandered back downstairs so Dipper could stand awkwardly with his sister and parents while Greg and I took pictures with Mabel’s camera and everyone’s phones. Mabel then insisted on getting a photograph of me with Dipper, which I reluctantly agreed to, followed by her wanting photos of Greg and I together and another set of photos where it was her with Greg. We then finished out the day with all of us in Dipper’s living room, resting as the game continued to play out softly on the television screen. There was quiet conversation mixed with animated dialogue from Greg and Mabel before I decided that we needed to get home. The snow that fell wasn’t deep, thankfully, but the ticker at the bottom of the TV was telling us that more snow was on the way. I wanted to be home before we were snowed in on the road. Greg and I thanked the Pines family for allowing us to participate in their holiday, and we were given plenty of leftovers for the road. With the light from the sun having faded quickly from the late autumn sky, our drive home was dark and cold. The harsh white light of the streetlights reflected brightly against the snow that had already fallen on the sides of the road, making everything look black and white. Greg asked me if I had a good time, and I answered him quite sincerely that I definitely had a good time. It was the most enjoyable Thanksgiving I had celebrated in years.


	38. Chapter 38

I didn’t hear from Wirt at all over Christmas. I was grateful that he’d agreed to come to Thanksgiving at my house, but I was kind of worried about him after he revealed that it’d been at least five years since he’d gone to visit his family. That was a large chunk of time that I couldn’t fathom at all, since I saw my family more than I wanted to. From what he told me, things were more awkward than terrible at this point between him and his parents, but it still made me feel bad for him. I got the impression that he’d also been avoiding his own brother for years as a consequence of his refusal to visit his family at all. I was glad that he was finally trying to make things a little better, even if it felt like the bare minimum.

One thing was definitely for certain, though, and that was my surprise at Wirt actually telling me a lot about his past. As much as I enjoyed his fairy tale version of events, it was much better hearing the story with details. He explained how he had resented his step-father after his mom remarried, and that his hatred moved more fiercely towards Greg after he was born. It took time for him to realize his anger at Greg was wrong, and it took time for him to even attempt getting closer to his step-father. Just as I thought from his fairy tale, his sexuality was a point of contention between himself and his parents, though it seemed like his step-dad tried to be more open than his mom initially. Each little detail he added proved that his fairy tale was a fairly accurate portrayal of the events, even if it was overly simplified. There was ultimately reconciliation, and his family is on better terms, but he still was bothered by what happened in the past. I appreciated him telling me everything, and I really hoped that seeing his family, even if it was just for a week, would help more with healing their relationship. From what he told me, it was almost a miracle that he allowed his parents to stay with him while helping Greg move out here.

Wirt returned to Oregon from his family holiday over New Year’s, but I didn’t receive any major updates about what happened until later on. He’d sent me text messages saying that things went okay, which I took at face value at the time. I was tempted to ask Greg privately about whether or not things actually went okay, but doing that felt wrong. The right thing to do was to simply wait for Wirt to tell me what happened whenever he felt ready to.

In the meantime, while he was gone, Christmas at my house was rowdy as our extended family had also decided to crash my house during the holiday. The only thing missing were my great-uncles. Their absence was felt more acutely the year before, since now everyone seemed to accept that they were likely gone forever. As Wirt said, I needed to keep having hope, and I did, for the most part. I didn’t have any plans of doing my own daring rescue on the high seas, but I kept hope alive as best I could. Despite what I’d told Wirt, I still was struggling with the idea that they hadn’t survived. I’d gotten word about two weeks after Thanksgiving that the expedition was underway in the Bermuda Triangle, and after that it was silent. I knew I wouldn’t hear back from them for a while, so I tried my best to not think about it very much. Only a handful of people I knew at the time even knew that the expedition was happening as it was; everyone in the UFO communities online knew about it, but it was easy for me to ignore those spaces while I waited for concrete news from the expedition when it was complete.

Near the tail end of January, Wirt asked if I wanted to go to see an opera. I laughed out loud at the notion of doing that; I didn’t know the first thing about opera! He’d sent it to me in a text message that I stared at for a long while, long enough for a coworker to notice. When I told him that my partner asked me to go to the opera, he also laughed because neither of us could imagine me going to a fancy theater and watching an opera. Seeing the musical was fine enough, but opera felt so pretentious. I seriously wanted to decline the offer, but I didn’t know if I could. He said that it was perfectly fine if I said I didn’t want to go, but I wanted so badly to enjoy something that he clearly enjoyed.

I called him after work.

“It’s really okay if you don’t want to go,” he laughed lightly. “I know opera is kind of a niche thing.”

I laughed nervously, still feeling bad, “I mean, you told me that there are subtitles—”

“Surtitles,” he corrected.

“Surtitles,” I repeated before going on, “but it just doesn’t seem like something I can bring myself to like, even if I tried. I mean, yeah, I liked the musical, but I don’t know if I can jump from there to opera...”

“It’s perfectly fine, Dipper,” he said, consoling me through the phone. If he was actually hurt by me declining his offer to see an opera, then he was hiding it really well. “There are a million other things we can do. I just thought I’d see if you were interested. It’s not a big deal at all. Honestly, I rather like our normal dates of lounging on your big sofa and watching TV.”

“Then why did you ask me to go to the opera if it’s not for a date?”

He hummed, “Mainly to gauge your interest. It’d be nice to not go by myself once in a while, but I’ll survive. I’m a big boy,” he chuckled.

I believed him, but I still felt kind of bad about it. “So... you’re really not upset that I don’t want to go?”

“Of course not! I can’t even picture you going to see an opera at all! You were uncomfortable enough at the musical.” I could hear the amusement in his tone. I’m sure he was imagining me going to an opera house dressed in jeans and a t-shirt around all the fancy people there. Honestly, that image had already crossed my mind several times when the text first appeared on my phone.

“I wasn’t _that_ uncomfortable at the musical,” I replied. My discomfort back then had nothing to do with the musical, after all, but he didn’t need to know any of that. “Hey, but I have something else I wanted to ask you.”

“Changing the subject?” He was still amused.

“Yeah,” I chuckled, “I just wanted to know how it was over Christmas. You know, with your parents?”

He sighed, the amusement leaving him quickly, “It was fine. Nothing bad happened, at least.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said, though it sounded like things weren’t really fine. “I was worried about you the whole time you were gone.”

“Really?” He sounded surprised that I would be worried about him at all. “You didn’t need to worry about me. There were some awkward conversations, but it was fine overall. And I, uh... I-I finally told them about you.”

“You did?” I asked, a bit nervous about this. “And... how did that go?”

He was quiet for a little while before he finally spoke up again, “They were a little disappointed until I told them about how smart you are. I feel like there’s a part of them that thinks that one day I’ll wake up and stop liking men.”

“That sucks,” I sighed. “Hey, but at least they like my degrees!”

“Oh, yeah, your degrees are extremely sexy,” he laughed.

I laughed, too, glad that this wasn’t too sore of a topic for him. It seemed like his trip home had helped to heal some of his old wounds a bit, even if things were still kind of awkward. Being with family can always be awkward, after all, so that was definitely an improvement to a tense atmosphere. However, I still felt a bit worried for him, since it seemed like there was a little lingering hostility about his sexuality, which was a definite shame.

“Did you show them pics of me?” I asked, genuinely curious if he had or not. I wasn’t really sure if he had too many pics of me to share, since he’s always more interested in taking aesthetic pics of inanimate objects and nature more so than of people.

“I did,” he sighed, “and my mom said that you’re quite handsome, but then tacked on, ‘It’s a shame that he likes men,’ and I felt myself die a little inside.” The annoyance was evident in his tone. “I did clarify that you’re bi, but then I had to explain the concept of bisexuality to her and it turned into a big mess.”

“At least you tried,” I smiled, speaking gently to him. “And how did the religion conversation go?”

“It didn’t,” he huffed. “As soon as I tried to say anything of the sort, they shut me down. I guess I’ll just have to continue to pretend that I’m Christian when I’m there, which isn’t really that hard.”

“They dragged you to a Christmas service, didn’t they?”

He groaned, “Yeah, and Mom always cries during those. It’s not as bad as Easter, though. She sobbed so hard during an Easter service once that the pastor had to stop speaking because no one could hear him, and he was using a mic!” His laughter felt genuine, and I started laughing, too. It was confirmation that not all of his memories with his parents were bad.

“It sounds like everything went pretty smoothly, then,” I mused.

“It did for me, yeah,” he said wistfully and again I wondered if there was something bad that actually _did_ happen that he wasn’t comfortable in telling me yet. “What about you? How was your holiday?”

“It was about as hectic as usual,” I laughed. “I’ll have to send you a pic of Mabel’s ridiculous Christmas sweater. I don’t know how she can make such monstrosities!” I really wanted to pivot back to whatever was still eating at Wirt’s mind, but I didn’t back then. We’d promised to no longer have secrets between each other, yet it felt like he was still hiding things from me. At the time, though, I felt okay with turning the attention onto me, even though he didn’t seem too uncomfortable with telling me about his holiday. It sounded like things were mostly okay, which meant my worry was for nothing.

“I fear the day when she decides to knit us matching sweaters,” he laughed lightly. The thought of it had never crossed my mind, but now that it was there, flashing in neon, I was suddenly feared that this was an omen.

“I really hope that never happens,” I said nervously before changing the subject. “I bet your brother is as much of a nut during the holidays as she is, right?”

“A little,” he said more cautiously than felt appropriate. “When he was younger, he was way more energetic, but these days he knows what a normal amount of enthusiasm is for various occasions.”

“Now that you mention it, he was definitely more subdued than I thought he’d be during Thanksgiving,” I hummed, recalling how polite Greg was until Mabel got him to be more loud and outgoing, and even then he wasn’t as obnoxious as she was.

“That’s because I told him to be on his best behavior,” he laughed. That made sense. “You know he’s still a nut during DD&MD!”

I laughed and nodded, knowing all too well how he managed to bypass nearly everything I planned for. We’d yet to have a session where he hadn’t managed to baffle me while putting his character into the strangest and most ridiculous situations, and I honestly enjoyed it.

“He definitely makes gaming fun,” I said, and that was definitely not a lie. I really enjoyed having both men in my campaign. I loved Wirt being there for obvious reasons, but Greg was the kind of unpredictable player that I’d never encountered before and he challenged my skills as a GM every time we played.

Wirt hummed in agreement and the subject of our conversation shifted to when we would pick up our game again, since we’d gone on hiatus for the holidays. It seemed early February would be the best time for everyone, and we set that up so we could work dates and other activities around the game. It honestly felt really good having such a casual, nerdy conversation with him after such a long time and I savored every second of it.

After that, we moved on to other subjects, fluidly winding between different topics until we both needed to get off the phone and do things. He needed to get dinner ready for himself and Greg, while I needed to resume research for my podcast. We’d eventually get back into the rhythm of our relationship again, with Wirt coming over and staying the night while we did the most mundane things together, but I still wonder what would have happened if I’d actually agreed to go to the opera with him.


	39. Chapter 39

Time felt both eternal and fleeting during those days after the winter holidays had ended. I had spent much of my life wondering if I had imagined the beautiful serenity of that summer Dipper and I experienced together as teenagers, but now that we were together again, we had fallen back into that serenity as though time had never touched it. We were older now, of course, with much less free time than we had when summer vacation felt endless, but we savored completely the time we spent together, even if that time was mainly spent relaxing in a darkened room while streaming movies on Dipper’s large television. When I was there, alone in his company, I remembered how I felt when I was a teenager, back when we rested our youthful bodies against tree trunks in the woods under dappled sunlight that kissed our skin as leaves whispered above us while the hot summer breeze gently caressed us.

However, time regained its steady flow near the beginning of March. Life had become so easy that the world needed to interrupt it with some kind of difficulty or complication. That was the nature of life as it charged along its bumpy road and forded hills and chasms. My work life became more hectic as project deadlines were on the horizon, making it even more necessary that I spend what fleeting free time I had with Dipper as a way to unwind from the trying hassles of each week. To be with him was an absolute joy in those moments, and he always let me tell him my frustrations without judgment. I didn’t like seeming so whiny, but I needed to vent to someone and Greg was always far too positive for my tastes when it came to understanding the woes of adulthood.

As March came to an end, news finally arrived from the expedition that was traversing the waters of the Bermuda Triangle. I had nearly forgotten that that was still going on, as Dipper seldom spoke of it. After he had told me that he was in a place where he could easily come to terms with the possibility that his great-uncles would never return, he kept quiet about it and soon I forgot that it was ever an issue. I’m sure that it ate at his mind constantly, but there was nothing he could do beyond wait to learn whenever the expedition returned. Until the point when it was again on my radar, though, I hardly gave a thought to it at all.

It began with a text from Dipper: “I have to call you after work. It’s important.”

When I asked for clarification, he gave a vague, terse response. At first, I felt a bit annoyed that he would be so curt with me, but as I calmed myself, I realized that if it was truly important, then it couldn’t be easily summarized in a text message. I sighed and continued doing my job, now that the pace of it was no longer whirling by at impossible speed. Whatever it was that was weighing so heavily and importantly on Dipper’s mind needed to not distract me until I was able to cope with it fully. I needed the thought of it to not interfere with my work performance.

Around 6pm was when Dipper finally called me. I was preparing dinner, and I handed off the duty of finishing the cooking to Greg while I slipped into my bedroom to chat with Dipper privately. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was about, since he had never revealed the subject of the matter to me before he called, though I had run through a few options in my mind before the actual call was sent to my phone. I was quite clueless beyond my few musings on the subject, but I knew that if it was as important as his text message implied, then I needed to be as undistracted as possible for his sake.

I answered the phone with a tentative “hello” and waited for Dipper to respond.

“Hi, Wirt,” he said in a careful tone. “I’m not calling at a bad time, am I?”

“Of course not,” I replied as warmly as I could.

“Okay, good,” he spoke quickly, “then I’ll just say it so it’s out of the way.” There was a brief pause before he spoke again, and my stomach tightened as that silence entered my ears. Whatever was the matter, he was going to just rip the bandage off and hope that it wouldn’t hurt too much. “They, um... the expedition, they... they found my uncles.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. I couldn’t tell if this was good or bad news yet, thus I waited for more information from him before I made any further noises on the subject.

“Yeah, uh...” I could hear him swallow loudly, “they’re alive, Wirt. They’re alive.” There was the faint sound of disbelief creeping into his voice, as though this news was still settling into him. After spending what was nearly three years by this point worrying endlessly about his great-uncles, and even seeking to kill himself in the process of looking for the possibility of them being alive, it appeared that he finally had the closure he sought after. I could only imagine what kinds of acrobatics his mind was doing while processing this information in his mind, but I wanted it all to end in elation for his sake.

As for me, I let out a sigh in relief, glad that it was good news, “That’s wonderful! Are they okay?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “they’re at a hospital in Miami right now. I don’t really know their condition, but I’m hopeful that they’re okay.”

That didn’t sound particularly good. A pair of older gentlemen like Stan and Ford being in a hospital sounded like it was a gamble. At least it seemed that they were being taken care of, though learning this news was a bit more sobering. I had expected his uncles to be right as rain, with Stan jovially regaling the crew of the expedition about how he punched a flank of extraterrestrial hoodlums while Ford fervently explained in detail the culture and biology of whatever creatures they had encountered. This explained why Dipper was being more cautious and less eager in his attempt to tell me what had happened and why he felt the need to call me after work. It felt like he was seeking out comfort from me, even though the crux of the news was ultimately favorable. This was a complex situation, as most real life situations tended to be.

“So you don’t know why they’re at the hospital?” I asked. I doubted that he knew the answer, but it seemed like the polite thing to ask given what information I had.

“No, not really,” he replied solemnly. “The head of the expedition said that they were severely dehydrated and malnourished and injured, but I don’t know if there’s anything else. The good news is that they’re alive, at least for now, but it’s complicated...”

I made a sound of affirmation, “I can see why you didn’t want to explain this over a text message. I take it there weren’t traces of extraterrestrials out there, either?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I talked to quite a few people who were on the expedition, but all of them had different experiences to share. Apparently Stan and Ford had mentioned something about being imprisoned somewhere, but the condition they were found in was less than ideal for getting any real concrete details from them.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said uselessly. I wished that there was more I could do. There was a quality to his voice that made me want to crawl through the phone and hold him close to me, but all I could do in reality was empathize with his situation. “Are you going to go down there and see them?”

He sighed heavily, “As much as I’d like to, I just can’t right now. I’m hoping that they’ll just give ‘em fluids or whatever and they’ll be back on their feet in no time, but who knows...”

Admittedly, this was not my expertise, so there was nothing I could say to convince him that everything that would be fine. Even _he_ seemed at a loss as to what to do, and he was supposed to be the smarter of the two of us.

“They’re in good hands,” I said gently in an attempt to reassure him. “I’m sure those people involved in the expedition are sticking around to make sure they’re looked after properly, right?” I hoped I was right.

“Yeah, they said they would stay there until my grunkles are discharged, but no one’s sure when that’ll be.” He was clearly dismayed by the uncertainty of the situation.

“Knowing your uncles,” I said lightly, “they’ll be out of there soon. They’re both too strong-willed to stay cooped up in a hospital for very long. I bet they’re already devising a way to break out and get back here.”

That elicited a small laugh from Dipper, “That or they’re driving the nurses nuts.”

“Or that,” I chuckled. From beyond my bedroom door I heard Greg call my name, presumably because dinner was ready. Unfortunately, dinner was just going to have to wait until I felt like Dipper was in a more comfortable place than he was at the beginning of the call. My stomach rumbled in protest at this decision.

“Hey, uh,” he said quietly, drawing my attention back from beyond the closed door, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I replied quickly, adjusting myself on the wooden trunk I was sitting on. It was the same trunk that Dipper had helped me acquire the year before, back when we had just started rekindling our relationship. It was beautiful and I loved it quite dearly, but it made for a poor seat.

“Would you...” His voice trailed. He was trying to properly word whatever he wanted to ask. “W-would you,” he started again, though it seemed like he was still unsure how to phrase it. He stopped and cursed under his breath, and I stifled a laugh at his struggle. “Would you, um, ever consider... moving in with me... someday...?”

When the words were finally pulled from his mouth and into the world, I stayed silent as I mulled them over. It wasn’t a possibility that I had ever thought of, not even in my wildest imaginings, yet now that it was splayed out before me, my mind raced with thoughts and emotions. It felt too soon, but it also felt like something that I wanted wholly and completely. I was a bit conflicted. However, the word that he tacked onto the end of his question gave me some leeway. If it was someday, then it certainly didn’t need to be now or even a month from now. It could live within that ethereal locale of “someday” forever, though I wished not for that to happen. I did want “someday” to eventually become “today.”

“You don’t need to give me an answer right now,” he said hastily, assuming that my long silence was me preparing to decline his proposal when that was entirely not the case.

“My answer is yes,” I said firmly.

He made a surprised noise that leaked into his tone as he stammered, “R-really?”

“’Someday’ doesn’t mean today,” I replied calmly, “but I think I’d like for ‘someday’ to happen, even if it’s not anytime soon.”

“Really?” he repeated, surprise still filtering into his voice.

“Yes,” I smiled. “Really.”

I needed to wait until Greg could live on his own without so much of my help, but the idea of us living together being planted did no harm. I was already spending so much of my time in Gravity Falls that it only made sense that I should eventually plant myself there permanently. My commute to work would be much longer, but that would simply be something I had to figure out in the time given. And there was plenty of time. There was no rush, after all. Our rekindled relationship was still a sapling, needing nourishment and sunlight to grow into a strong and mighty tree.

Dipper was quiet for a long moment before he let free the lightest laugh I had ever heard him utter. “That’s great! You’re right, it doesn’t need to be right now or next month or even next year, but... b-but I’d like for it to happen someday... whenever you want to, of course.”

“Of course,” I spoke softly. From beyond the door, my name was called louder and more insistently. It was loud enough that Dipper could hear it on his end.

“I, uh, guess I’d better let you go,” he said reluctantly.

“Yeah, it’s dinner time,” I grumbled a little. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” he chuckled lightly, “have a nice dinner!”

I hummed in agreement and gave him a tender farewell before be both hung up. It seemed like he was in a better place. That was likely why he wanted to call me at all, in order for me to help him cope with his feelings a bit. He needed a comforting voice to sooth his wandering mind, and he had come to me without any prompting. I was glad to help him, even if it felt like I had only helped a little bit. I wondered if he had called me before talking to his sister about it as a way to prepare himself for her cheerfulness by having his moment of grounding with me, but there was no way for me to know without asking and I had no intention of asking.

What laid more heavily on me was the end of that call. I had only told Greg about the expedition portion of the call and gave no indication that Dipper had asked me to live with him. Someday. Greg didn’t need to know that information. At least, he didn’t need to know _yet_. That knowledge was meant solely for me, and when I had time to contemplate it fully, I found that I could so easily picture myself living with Dipper. It would be such a simple transition, as we already spent so much time together in his house. Living with him would mean that I could awaken to him every morning, enjoy dinner with him every afternoon, be curled up with him while watching television every evening, and be wrapped in his warmth every night. It seemed like such an obtainable dream, one that I could easily touch without much effort at all. The largest complication was the thought of how far Gravity Falls is from where my current work was located. The commute would be needlessly long in order to do a job that I only moderately enjoyed. It paid well, yes, but the effort of driving two and a half hours there and two and a half hours back every day didn’t sit particularly well with me. Idly, I wondered if I could convince my boss to allow me to work from home and only come on site for meetings and such. I figured that I would have to mull that over in addition to the other things I would have to mull over in order to feel like I could, in good faith, leap into living permanently with Dipper in his immaculate and beautiful home that was nestled so neatly within the wilds of Gravity Falls.

This was a decision that I would spend a rather long time thinking over from that point on.


	40. Chapter 40

My grunkles were found alive near the end of March, and after spending a couple weeks in a hospital to be treated for dehydration, malnutrition, and “multiple unexplainable injuries,” they were discharged and finally able to return to Gravity Falls. This meant that it was time, once again, for a gigantic party. Thankfully, it was held at the Mystery Shack instead of my house, which I was glad for. I love my family and friends, I really do, but I can’t always be the one whose house gets taken over for parties all the time.

Anyway, before the party was even set up, Stan and Ford needed a place to crash while still technically recovering, so they ended up at my house. Soos had offered that they stay at the Shack, but Mabel insisted that they stay somewhere else while she prepared for the party, which meant that my house was the next logical choice and I honestly didn’t mind them being there at all. The first night they arrived at my place, I gave them both a grand tour of the house and answered their questions about what had happened while they were gone, but for some reason neither of them wanted to explain what exactly happened to _them_ during the years they were missing. I didn’t press them for that information, but I found it kind of odd considering that Grunkle Ford used to trust me intimately with almost everything. I supposed that letting them have time to rest was the best course of action before they gave up that information, though Grunkle Stan implied that they’d reveal everything at the party, since by that point Mabel had made it very clear to everyone that it was going to be “amazing.”

Finally seeing my grunkles after about 3 years of them being missing was a bit of a shock. They looked a lot thinner than I remembered, and I assumed it was due to whatever happened to them while they were gone. They also looked so much older than I remembered, too. They were always old in my memory, but suddenly they had aged quickly without me being there to witness it. They certainly weren’t frail, but just... old. That stray observation ate at the back of my mind for a few days after they’d returned to Gravity Falls and I didn’t enjoy it. Quietly, I hoped that the thought would disappear with time, but for the moment it was festering in my brain when I should have been focusing on how great it was that they’d returned safely.

I hadn’t told them about Wirt yet, and I hoped to reintroduce him to them at the party, assuming that Wirt agreed to it. Stan had noticed the traces of Wirt in my house and mentioned it to me, but our conversation on that topic didn’t go much further than him asking if I was seeing someone and me simply replying with “yeah.” Since Wirt was frequenting my house almost every weekend up until that point, he’d made sure to leave some personal items in the house for whenever he spent the night. His toiletries and clothing were in my bedroom and the master bathroom, which neither of my great-uncles entered beyond the first day they were staying with me while I was giving them the tour, but there were other indicators that this place was slowly filling with Wirt’s presence. I made sure to have Wirt’s favorite brand of tea on hand for him, since he loved to drink it in the morning, and he bought me a record player that was now in the living room with a small stack of records organized neatly next to it. Because his expertise is in interior design, he helped me a lot with getting things to look nice and orderly in my house, which also contributed to my home not looking entirely like my own space. I’d asked him at some point after New Year’s if he could help me with getting the inside of my house decorated after I’d finished touching up the walls in some of the rooms, and Wirt took it as his great mission in life to transform my sparsely decorated home into a beautiful masterpiece that combined both of our aesthetics. Thankfully, we have a lot of similarities when it comes to design and such, so my house was now looking more like a beautiful rustic cabin that a competent person lived in rather than the confused decorating style of a bachelor with no time to care for his home. I think that also factored into both grunkles getting the impression that I had a partner, even if it wasn’t talked about. There was plenty of time in the future to let them know about Wirt.

In the meantime, Wirt had gone a bit quiet after my grunkles returned to Gravity Falls. I figured he was giving me space, which was fine enough while Stan and Ford were settling themselves temporarily in my home. Wirt and I were still texting each other, but we hadn’t called or seen each other for a couple weeks. Since it seemed like he didn’t want to take the initiative, I ended up calling him randomly one afternoon.

“I should have assumed she’d throw a party,” Wirt sighed after I told him about the upcoming welcome home party.

“A party is the least we can do,” I said brightly. “They deserve way more than just a party, but it’s good enough for now.”

“Have they said anything else?” Wirt was just as curious about this whole situation as I was at the time.

“They’ve said a lot,” I chuckled, “but none of it’s been related to whatever happened to them. I’m hoping they’ll reveal everything at the party, but who knows. They do what they want.”

Wirt let out a small laugh, “Yeah, they’re free spirits. They might be struggling to quantify their experience for all we know.”

“I doubt it,” I grinned. “They probably just wanna surprise everyone with the details later. Especially Grunkle Stan. He’s quite the showman, you know.”

Again, he laughed lightly, “Yeah, if he wasn’t, then that Mystery Shack wouldn’t exist.”

“But you still haven’t answered my question,” I said quickly. “Do you wanna go or not?”

He made a thoughtful sound and I waited patiently for his reply. “As much as I’d like to, there’s still that issue of how awkward it might be having you parade me around for everyone.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. “You mean because it’ll be the first time we’ll be seen at a big public gathering with a ton of people around who only kinda-sorta know we’re dating?”

He hummed, “Yeah. I don’t like the idea of being a conversation prop.”

“But you won’t be,” I insisted. “I’m not going to show you off to everyone.”

“It’s fine,” he said, which was a clue that it wasn’t fine. It was starting to look like he would never join me for any big public gathering or party ever again, which hurt me a little. It almost felt like he wanted to hide our relationship from the world, like he was still a child hiding a secret. Given his history, I understood why he wanted to be cautious, but it weighed heavily on me. I wished that he was more carefree about it. I’d already told basically everyone I knew by then that I was dating a really great guy, and I kind of wondered if Wirt had told anyone at all beyond Greg and his family. He was so incredibly lonely back then, and I don’t think he ever realized it.

“Wirt, I’m not begging you to come,” I sighed, “but I can’t believe you’d think that I’d present you to everyone like a show horse. I just want to reintroduce you to Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford. They already kinda know I’m dating someone, and I’d like to see their surprise when they find out it’s you.”

There was silence on the other end as Wirt continued thinking about this. I knew that he wasn’t a lover of parties or crowds, and I was highly aware that this was going to be a battle. I just kind of hoped we’d gotten past this apprehension now that he’d finally met my parents, but apparently not. His introverted nature made him hate going to big parties. I always assumed that the only reason he even bothered coming to my housewarming to begin with was simply because he wanted to see me again no matter what.

“Can’t we just do it privately?” he asked quietly. “The introduction, I mean.”

“I mean... we could,” I replied lightly. There wasn’t a rule saying that he couldn’t meet up with my uncles on some random weekend without the whole of Gravity Falls being there. “I was just more or less hoping that you’d come to the party, even if it’s just for a little while.”

“Dipper,” he began gently, “I’m going to the party. I just don’t want you to make a show of the fact that we’re dating.”

“Huh?”

“Greg and I are going to the party, make no mistake,” he said with a laugh. “I just don’t want you to stand on a platform and yell, ‘This is Wirt and he’s my boyfriend and we’re dating and we’re in love,’ or something ridiculous like that.”

“O-oh...” That made some sense... sort of. “Okay, then... we’ll just take Stan and Ford aside at some point and tell them the news. Is that better?”

“Yes,” was his simple reply.

“Then, uh,” I laughed nervously, “I should probably warn you that I kinda already told a bunch of people in town that we’re dating.”

“What?” He didn’t sound mad but he didn’t sound happy, either.

“Yeah, um... Quite a few people who will be at the party will know that you’re my partner, so... there’s that...”

He inhaled sharply, held the breath for a very long time, then let it out in a long, loud sigh. “This means that I’ll have a lot of people buzzing around me, doesn’t it?” Again, his voice was overly measured.

“Y-yeah... probably...”

Wirt clicked his tongue, “I’ll survive, I suppose. This isn’t ideal, but I have to get this over with at some point, don’t I?”

“No one’s going to be judging you,” I sputtered. “If anything, they’re gonna be more invested in Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford than they’ll be in our relationship. We might get some people congratulating us on going steady, but otherwise everyone’ll be interested in whatever yarn my grunkles have to spin.”

Wirt hummed again, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. The tale of your great-uncles seemingly coming back from the dead is a bit more titillating than our relationship status.” He made another noise that was quiet, as though he was trying his hardest to be optimistic. “Yes, I think this will be fine. Greg and I will come to the party; we’ll listen to whatever tall tale your great-uncles have to tell, enjoy a little food and beverage, and then... leave, maybe?” It sounded like he was trying his best to convince himself that everything would be okay.

“Exactly,” I smiled, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Everything’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry. Everyone already knows who you are, since you already met most of them at the housewarming, so you shouldn’t worry so much!”

I could tell by his prolonged silence that he wasn’t entirely convinced. “If things get too hectic, then I’ll probably leave without Greg. We’ll be taking separate vehicles.”

 “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” I remembered about when Greg had come to my house for our birthday party and understood where he was coming from instantly. “Considering how late he stayed for the birthday party, I can only imagine that he’ll be staying just as late at the Mystery Shack.”

“I can’t fathom how he can stay awake late like that,” Wirt mumbled. Considering he was usually out by 10pm, it made sense that he would question anyone who stayed up that late. I was already pushing it by staying up as late as I usually did, and my body hated me for it all the time. Staying up super late in your early 20s feels a lot different from staying up super late in your late 20s. The way both mine and Wirt’s bones cracked when getting up after sitting for long periods of time only reinforced that we were getting older, and getting older clearly sucked.

“He’s young,” I said with a shrug that he couldn’t see. “I used to stay up until 4am, but now I can only last until 2, and even then my body gets very upset that I’m doing that.”

Wirt snorted out a laugh, “And you already know I have trouble staying awake past 10, which is a bit pathetic.”

“It’s not pathetic,” I said soothingly. “Getting a good night’s sleep is important.”

“I didn’t even have that much stamina when I was younger,” he admitted sadly. “The only time I was ever okay with being awake for long periods of time was when I was in the Unknown...”

“That liminal space was beyond your body. You can’t judge your stamina in the real world based on an experience in a space outside of reality.”

“I suppose,” he sighed. “But I sometimes do wonder what it must be like to stay awake late into the night. What kinds of dark and beautiful things exist out beyond the confines of the waking world? Shadows lurk there, I know this, and fear bides its time within those shadows, but I know that there must be a beauty hidden within that darkness which draws certain people towards it. The lure of a flickering streetlight. The hushed voices of those pursing vile pastimes. It seems almost rapturous to think of what lingers under the shine of the moon and the shimmer of the stars, one’s soul being pulled in by the harsh neon lights of humanity under the black night sky and its dirtied blotches of clouds.”

I couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh, shaking my head, “Only you could find poetic beauty in something as unknowable to you as the darkness of night.”

“I’m sure that seeing it in reality would be a disappointment,” he chuckled.

“I’ll have to take you to Las Vegas at some point,” I mused. “If you really wanna try experiencing that, then Sin City is your best bet.”

“Maybe,” he hummed lightly. “I just hope to never be consumed by it, as some people do.”

I grinned slightly, “If you stray, I’ll make sure to guide you back towards the light.”

“You’re already my sunlight, Dipper,” he said gently. “I just need to look to the east each morning and find you there, waiting to pull me towards your warmth.” The affection that I felt in his tone shone brightly across the phone’s speaker. No one had ever called me their sunlight before, and it felt oddly comforting. I liked being compared to the celestial body he adored so much.

I struggled to find a way to express that feeling, since the emotion was strange for me, and all I could think to say was, “Then... I’ll shine brightly for you no matter what.”

He spoke quietly something akin to a thank you, but it was so quiet that it was almost a whisper. I wondered if beyond the phone line he was smiling one of those small melancholy smiles of his. I could picture it in my mind, how handsome that expression made him in the fading sunlight. I’m sure he was seated in his favorite chair and surrounded by flickering candlelight. Was that a thing he really did? I noticed in his house that there were so many candles and all of them looked like they’d been lit before, so it must have been something he did, even if it wasn’t very often. It seemed like something within his personality, to be sitting in that chair of his with a blanket on his lap and a faded hardcover from a bygone era in his hands while he read by candlelight. It was such a romantic image and it reminded me of our stay in that cabin the summer before, lazing about on unfamiliar furniture while enjoying light summer reading. That image was burned into my memory, just as most of that vacation was.

Soon enough, our conversation moved to talking about other things, since I hadn’t heard too much about what Wirt had been up to these past couple of weeks. With confirmation that he would be coming to the welcome home party, it felt like a weight had been lifted as we talked about TV shows and books and Wirt’s recent trip to an art gallery. His life was so fascinating in how different it was from my own when we weren’t together. He took in much more art and culture than I did, and I felt like I was such a slob by comparison. I still somewhat regretted deciding to not go to the opera with him that one time, as it could have afforded me an experience that was outside of my comfort zone.

We talked into the early evening, until Wirt needed to head off to make dinner for himself and Greg. It reminded me that I needed to do the same, so we said our goodbyes and got off the phone. My great-uncles didn’t say anything about how I had hidden myself in the basement for such a long time, since they knew that was my sanctuary, but I had a feeling that they knew I was talking to my beau. Grunkle Stan made a remark that I don’t remember anymore, but I recall that it embarrassed me as I walked into the kitchen to try and whip up a proper dinner. It was just a few more days and then I could tell them about me and Wirt.


	41. Chapter 41

It is not so much that I hate parties. In actuality, I usually enjoy myself at parties after I have finished dragging my feet to get to whatever party I have been invited to. Truthfully, my main anxiety has always been in assuming that everyone at the party will hate me and that I will be somehow painfully out of place in that environment, when the absolute opposite almost always occurs whenever I finally plant my feet upon the soil of the party itself. The welcome home party for Dipper’s great-uncles was no different.

This party marked the first time since moving to Oregon that I had visited the Mystery Shack without going down into the dark places below its kitschy façade, as all of the festivities were housed on the main floor of the tourist trap as well as upon the surrounding grounds outside of it. I was grateful that Greg and I decided to take separate vehicles to the party, as it meant that I could listen to music to defuse my stress a little instead of listening to him prattle on about how I should “cheer up” or “look on the bright side” and how “it won’t be so bad.” Those kinds of conversations only made me tense up even more and increase my anxiety ten-fold as it fueled my imagination’s ability to draw forth even graver scenarios than the ones it had initially drummed up. Instead of having to deal with his overly cheerful attitude, I listened to my favorite music and sang along, letting my worries disappear within each note.

As usual, whatever fears swirled around in my head were completely unfounded, as everyone was clearly more interested in having a good time and getting every opportunity possible to congratulate Dipper’s great-uncles on their safe return instead of focusing on the fact that I was there. I mingled with different people and only a handful asked how things were going in my relationship with Dipper. He had been absolutely correct, just as I should have expected. Even his great-uncles, who I was reintroduced to almost immediately after arriving, made their conversation with me brief. Ford seemed to not remember me at all, likely because I tended to avoid him whenever he took Dipper away back then, and Stan seemed confused as to why I would be interested in such a “weakling nerd,” which was apparently a joke because he laughed about it and patted my back really hard? I even had the opportunity to meet more of Dipper’s extended family while at the party and found all of them to be as delightful as the rest of his family.

To put things more succinctly, all the nightmarish prophecies that my mind had laid out were left unfulfilled.

As the party headed into late afternoon, Dipper pulled me aside without anyone’s notice and we stole ourselves up to the roof of the Mystery Shack to watch the sunset together. With it being April, the air was still crisp as winter’s breath clung to it and we shivered a little as the darkness of night slowly blanketed the sky. We sat there quietly as we gazed up at the changing colors of the sky, our bodies touching to hold our warmth between us as the chilly air passed by. The roof was so much smaller than it was in my memory, now that both of us were grown adults resting on a location that was barely large enough for us. I can’t believe we once spent an entire night sleeping on this small patch of leveled-off roof that hovered at such an unsafe height above the ground. Despite the fleeting sensation of fear at how falling from this height could be potentially fatal, there was a simplistic beauty in this moment that was marred only by the loud music clattering below us. Both of us held fond memories of this location in our hearts, and I’m sure that Dipper felt the same emotional weight of those memories that I did. We had sat up here together in our youth, watching the sun as she slowly fell to slumber behind the far off cliffs that encompassed the valley that Gravity Falls resided in. We said nothing as the sky revealed its innumerable stars, and we said nothing as we returned to the revelry on the ground. In that quiet time we spent together, it was like we had flown above the noise of the world and were gazing upon the glory of nature as we glided on wings that soared along the cool April breeze.

For me, that was the highlight of the party, but for everyone else, it was when Dipper’s great-uncles took up karaoke microphones and regaled us with the tale of what happened to them in the waters of an ocean on the other side of the country.

And what a tale it was! While investigating the Bermuda Triangle, as Dipper had said they were doing, they were attacked by a strange undersea vessel that was clearly of inhuman origin. As Dipper assumed, they used their UFO-submarine to try and escape, but their sub was rendered incapacitated by the mysterious creatures attacking them and they were taken alive to their domed underwater city: Atlantis. It turns out that the creatures living in Atlantis are not extraterrestrial, but instead some kind of evolved prehistoric species that used to live on land. They were advanced enough back in the Cretaceous period to note the coming of the asteroid that would wipe out most of the species on Earth at the time, and ended up seeking refuge  underwater, living there hidden from the world above sea level for millions of years. Apparently, there are lots of these creatures at the bottom of every ocean on Earth... or so that is what Ford explained. Stan was arrested almost immediately for breaking one of their laws, but Ford spent a while living peacefully with the creatures, documenting their culture and learning about their technology while his twin spent a lot of time devising schemes to free himself from jail. There came a point where Ford realized that the creatures had no intention of letting either of them return to the surface for fear of word getting out to humanity that a hyper-intelligent prehistoric civilization was living in secret in the oceans of the world. Both brothers ended up working together in secret to escape from their captors, which involved stealing technology and weapons in order to break out with brute force. Once they broke out from the city of Atlantis, they surfaced only to find that the vehicle they had stolen didn’t have enough fuel to take them back to land, so they drifted for a long time and had used up all of their provisions by the time the expedition Dipper sent had found them. This definitely explained why they were both dehydrated, malnourished, and injured when they were found in the ocean. Unfortunately for both the expedition team and Dipper’s great-uncles, the vehicle they had commandeered had a fail-safe in it that caused it to self-destruct should it be in contact with human technology, which meant that all evidence was lost.

It sounded absolutely ridiculous, but everyone enjoyed the tale nonetheless. Both men were animated in their retelling of the fantastical adventure they had experienced, which made listening to it all the more enjoyable. Most importantly, though, Dipper looked so much happier to see both of his great-uncles alive and well. I hadn’t realized it before, but he was truly aching at the thought of these two men being gone for good and seeing him now looking so happy made my heart swell. I felt that I needed to work extra hard to preserve that happiness.

As the party moved later into the night, I pulled Dipper aside and told him that I was going to go home. I was becoming fatigued by all of the social interaction I had to endure. I enjoyed myself, truly, but there was only so much that I could handle before I felt like I needed to crash, and I felt myself butting up against that threshold acutely. He offered to walk me to my car, which I graciously accepted. Having more time to be alone with him was all I really wanted, after all, and with how many people were at the party, I had to park pretty far away despite having arrived on time.

“I’m really glad you came,” he said idly as we walked. It felt sincere but it also felt like words to fill up the silence as we walked in the darkness, the lights and sounds of the Mystery Shack fading behind us.

“I’m glad I came, too,” I said quietly as I looked ahead. I could see my little sedan in the near distance, moonlight reflecting off its hood.

“They, um,” he began nervously, and I paused in walking to look over to him. He also paused his footsteps, turning to face me in the darkness. The lenses of his glasses reflected the moonlight, making his eyes behind them appear like black voids. “That was quite a story they told, wasn’t it?” I got the feeling that this wasn’t what he originally wanted to say.

“It certainly was,” I smiled. “You’re happy that they’re fine, aren’t you?”

He laughed lightly, nodding his head, “I really am. I never lost hope...”

Carefully, I took his hand in mine, giving it a gentle squeeze before tugging him along as we continued to walk towards my car. “If you lose hope, then the darkness wins. You drive yourself directly into a mindset where everything is stark and stagnant, like winter. However, as long as spring follows the winter, there is always hope beyond that darkness.” This was the lesson I had learned in the Unknown, when I thought of the Beast as a creature born from my own personal darkness. To overcome the Beast meant that I could move forward – that I could awaken and persevere and live. That creature was the winter and beyond him was the spring, my salvation from his wicked clutches and his lies. It was a step toward becoming a better version of myself, a version of myself that was more confident and more aware of my own strength, even if it was just a singular step down a much longer road.

“It’s kinda appropriate that it’s spring, then,” he chuckled softly. His fingers threaded between mine were warm as spring sunshine and I felt myself inching closer to him.

“I guess so,” I laughed in kind as we stopped at the hood of my car. Now that we had arrived at the location of my vehicle, I felt a reluctance to leave.

Despite the bite of the spring air, it was comfortable being out in the moonlight with Dipper. Silver light glittered on the messy wisps of curly brown hair that peeked from under Dipper’s hat as the wind blew gently against us. The shimmer reminded me of the twinkling stars above us. We watched each other silently for a moment before I reached a hand up to remove his hat from his head. I wanted to see more of the starlight that shone neatly in the sheen of each curl. Much to my surprise, he didn’t stop me from doing this. With my other hand, I combed my fingers through his hair, searching for the constellation on his forehead that he tried so desperately to cover up. I whispered something, and I think it was “beautiful” because I know it was some word meant to describe just how perfect he looked.

For a moment, Dipper allowed all of this to happen without moving, his expression unreadable in the darkness, but soon he moved his face close to mine and pressed his lips against my own. He pulled away slightly, mumbling something that I have long forgotten. Perhaps he said “I love you,” as it feels like the phrase appropriate for the moment, but I distinctly remember not allowing him to finish. Instead, I quickly erased the space between us, craving his lips on mine again. I hadn’t realized that in the weeks that we had been apart, as small as that number of days was, I was hungry for his lips against mine in a way that I felt embarrassed about later. Dipper seemed pleasantly surprised by this, and before I knew it, my lower body was pressed against the hood of my car and I had dropped his hat onto the grass at our feet. When we finally pulled away for breath, I could see around Dipper’s head a halo of glorious spring moonlight as it shined above us, and though his expression was still obscured by the dim light surrounding us, I could tell that a light smile tugged at his lips, glad for whatever came over me in that short moment in time.

I cherished that smile and Dipper’s beauty for a little bit until I suddenly felt guilty. Not about kissing him, of course, but for dropping his hat on the ground. Dipper laughed at the sudden change in my attitude as I worried about something so unimportant. I picked the hat up, dusting off the cold wet grass from it, and when I handed it back to Dipper, he kissed my hand in thanks. I was already flushed from feeling unnecessarily guilty, and now I felt even more warmth flood my ears and cheeks at this sappy display. I apologized profusely for, well, everything, and clumsily searched my pockets for my keys.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he laughed after I finally found my keys. “You’re the person I love most in the world right now. You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

This was when the embarrassment began to hit me hard. I wasn’t sure why I felt embarrassed, or perhaps I was mislabeling the feeling entirely, but the blush at my cheeks continued to burn red on my face. I started to apologize again, but immediately halted the words as they attempted to leak from my mouth. To divert my focus from feeling oddly nervous around the man I was dating, I instead moved towards the driver’s side door, pulling it to realize that I hadn’t unlocked it, then finally getting in after hitting the unlock button on the key fob.

“Wirt,” Dipper said softly as I slipped into my car, “my grunkles will be out of my house by the end of the week. You’ll come over on Saturday night, won’t you?”

With one leg still dangling out of my car, I looked up at him and nodded. I smiled as well. It wasn’t a nervous smile, either; it was the kind of smile that I hoped conveyed to him how much I wanted to come over so we could lounge around and do nothing for the entire weekend. “I’d love nothing else in the world, Dipper.”

He sent me a gentle smile as I pulled my leg into my car, and he shut the door as I put the key into the ignition. I waved a hand to him and he slowly backed up to give me space to pull out. When I felt like he was far enough away from me, I put the car into drive and slowly traveled across the grass towards the gravel drive that would take me to the main roads. In my rearview mirror, I could see Dipper waving at me before shoving his hands into his pockets and walking back to join the party. I listened to music as I drove home, still feeling embarrassed at how hungrily I desired Dipper’s mouth on my mouth. It was a primal emotion. I wasn’t disturbed by the emotion, but more surprised by it. It had been a long time since that animalistic desire had bubbled up within me, as brief as the sensation was. I mused on this for far longer than I should have as I drove back home towards Bend.


	42. Chapter 42

There was an odd relief that I felt once my grunkles finally left my house. I don’t think of myself as being a solitary creature, but I was weirdly stifled by them being at my house for so long. Maybe it was because they had invaded my sacred space... or maybe it was because having them around hindered my private time with Wirt. I wasn’t really sure, but I was glad to have my house to myself again. Besides, if I wanted to see them, I just had a short drive to the Mystery Shack where they were taking up refuge. It was still technically their home.

Wirt and I soon fell back into our normal routine of spending the weekend together, our relationship growing more and more intimate as summer began. Everything between us was happening comfortably and organically. I finally understood that tree analogy Wirt had said before, about wanting our love to slowly grow and become stronger. The calm pace of our relationship definitely made it feel like it was becoming sturdy; it wasn’t so slow that it felt like it was crawling or so quick that it felt like it could easily break. I enjoyed the pace of it, and I could tell that Wirt did as well.

However, something was still on my mind as we spent more time together, and the more time we spent together, the more I felt this thought eating away at me. I’d brought it up to Wirt before, but near the end of summer I decided to bring it up again. The thought was this: I really wanted him to move in with me. I knew that if I talked about it too often then he’d probably get annoyed, so I made sure not to mention it at all for a long time after initially bringing it up early in spring. It was becoming pretty apparent that Wirt was slowly moving a lot of his personal items into my house, to where it was hard to look anywhere in my house without seeing his influence. At this rate, it would only be a matter of time before he dumped the rest of his house into my house, and it made me wonder how empty Wirt’s home must have been. Maybe Greg’s things were slowly consuming his house, and the thought of that made me uneasy. That house was very much a space Wirt had worked hard to make his personal sanctuary, and for it to be overrun with his brother’s things felt like a shame.

I brought the idea up again one weekend while we were together, sometime before my birthday. As usual, we had nothing planned for that day. Wirt and I were sitting on the back porch together. He nursed a glass of iced tea as he looked out at the scenery at the edge of my property. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day with only a few high, wispy clouds cluttering the sky. I was next to him, drinking a can of Pitt while we sat on a wooden swing that I’d added to the outdoor space shortly after moving in. Before Wirt started coming over, I barely ever used it. Now we spent afternoons together on that swing, wasting away the day when we didn’t feel like watching TV, Wirt reading a book while I played games on my phone. Sometimes we listened to music from a wireless speaker that I’d set up on a nearby table. It was relaxing.

I finished my drink and stopped our swinging to lean over and place the empty can the table. As I did this, I sighed and said, “There’s something I wanna talk to you about.”

Wirt made a noise that sounded like he was dislodged from a dream, and his eyes watched me as I returned my back against the bench we sat swinging in. “Should I be worried?”

I shook my head, “Nah, I just wanted to ask if you were still thinking about moving in. I mean... you said it was a possibility, and you’ve got like half your house here now, so I was just wondering if that was something you were still thinking about. That’s all.”

He sighed heavily, “As much as I’d love to, there’s still the matter of Greg.” I figured his reluctance was because of Greg.

“Is he still not focused on his future?”

“He’s just goofing around,” he replied bitterly. “I asked my boss if it would be possible for me to work from home so I could move out here, and he agreed to it. I’ve been bringing stuff from home here for months now, to the point where most of what I own is here. I have the drive and the desire, and I really do want to live here with you, but... it’s Greg.”

“At least he has a job, right?” I could honestly understand his frustration.

“Yes, and we’ve come to an agreement that should I move in with you, I’ll give him the house, but I don’t know if he’s making enough working part-time at a grocery store to be able to pay for the mortgage, let alone the other bills he’ll have to pay by himself.” He frowned deeply, his eyes drawing down into his glass of nearly finished tea. “I’ve seen him going out to the backyard or the empty lot across the street with some friends he’s made at work, filming weird videos together, but other than that, all he does is play video games. I hear him through the door. He’s on his headset, talking to people over the internet as he plays games. It seems rather frivolous.”

I shrugged, looking up as a cloud passed between us and the sun, “I dunno, maybe he’s doing livestreams.”

“Livestreams?” Wirt looked at me curiously.

“Yeah,” I shrugged again, “maybe he’s doing livestreams where people watch him play video games. People can get money for doing that, you know.”

His jaw dropped. “You can get paid to play video games on the internet?” He was making it sound like this was a foreign concept. I knew he wasn’t really knowledgeable when it came to technology, but I thought for sure he knew about this kind of thing. Then again, he also didn’t know much about podcasting when we started talking about that, so maybe I was giving him more credit than I should have...

“If he’s getting donations from his followers, then yeah.”

Wirt seemed absolutely baffled at this concept, raising an eyebrow as he shook his head. “People really pay money to watch other people play video games?”

“If they find the content entertaining, then they’re willing to pay for something that amuses them,” I smirked. “That’s how I get money to make my podcast, remember? People like my content, so they give me money to make more of it. It’s like buying a book or an album or a movie ticket, but all of the money goes straight to the creators of the content instead of a middle man. If Greg’s being smart about this, then he’s likely doing the same, just like how I’m doing with the podcast.”

He thought about that for a few seconds, taking a final drink of his iced tea before leaning forward to join his empty glass with my empty can. Upon his return to resting against the swing, he folded his hands in his lap and said, “This is probably something I should talk to him about...”

I nodded, “Yeah. We can sit here, making assumptions all we want, but you won’t really know until you talk to him. I’m sure he’ll tell you if you ask him.”

A long breath left him as his eyes moved upwards. I followed his gaze as I traced the outlines of clouds as they rolled by. It seemed like more clouds were coming in, but not enough to worry about it raining anytime soon. A quiet came over us, and I listened to the background noise of the forest surrounding my home. Insects buzzed nearby. Birds chirped their songs. A light breeze rustled the leaves. It was so peaceful and so wonderful. Though it was late summer, the temperature wasn’t oppressively hot; it was just right, which was a rarity for August.

Movement from next to me wrested my thoughts away from the beauty of the day as I watched Wirt get up and take our empty drinks into his hands. “I’ll be back once I put these away,” he said as he walked towards the back door.

“Could you grab me a glass of water while you’re in there?”

He nodded and disappeared inside the house, leaving me alone with nature. I thought for sure the two brothers had gotten to a point where they were closer, but it was still looking like there was a gap between them. How had Wirt gone for all this time without asking Greg about anything at all? Maybe he was waiting for Greg to tell him first, but I’d have thought that Wirt’s curiosity would drive him to ask what Greg was doing. Although, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Wirt didn’t really have a lot of curiosity about the unknown. He was in the habit of having things happen to him and not interrogate why those things were happening at all up until the point where the madness around him made him break. He spent months not bothering to ask what my profession was, even though it wasn’t a secret and I would’ve gladly given him that information without much fuss. He only asked when he felt like it was the right opportunity to. In this situation with Greg, it seemed like he was doing the exact same thing, either waiting for the right time to ask or for Greg to toss that information into his lap.

Wirt returned with two glasses of ice water and one of his many hardcover books tucked under an arm. He handed me one of the glasses, which I thanked him for, and he settled himself back next to me on the swing, resting the book in his lap as he took a sip from his own glass. I watched him quietly for a second before following his motion of drinking. I wasn’t actually thirsty, but it felt nice on a day like today.

He heaved a sigh after swallowing, letting out a light laugh, “I still can’t believe people can make money off of playing around on the internet...”

Of course he was still thinking about that. “You’d be surprised how much dough a person can make doing stuff they love. I mean, the internet is still a terrible trash fire of a place, but it’s definitely opened up opportunities for creative individuals to garner fame, even if it’s just in a niche area.”

He shook his head, “I’ll definitely ask Greg about it when I get a chance. Maybe I’ve been worrying about him unnecessarily.”

I touched a hand to his back and rubbed it gently, “It’s okay. I totally understand being worried about your sibling.” Although, nowadays I’m not so concerned about my sister, since I know she’s doing fine and is quite capable of taking care of herself. I still worry about her, though, even if it’s not as much of a focus for me as it was in the past.

He glanced at me, looking into my eyes for a long moment. I got a little nervous about how he was looking at me and moved my hand away, turning my gaze to the side. I half expected him to kiss me, since he seemed to delight in doing that after we looked at each other for too long, but he didn’t. Instead, he placed his glass of water on the table and opened his book to read. The lack of a kiss felt a bit like a letdown for me, but he seemed preoccupied by whatever was going through his head at the time. I didn’t let it bring me down. Instead, I pulled out my phone and started playing a game, slouching down into the swing as it cradled our bodies in it.


	43. Chapter 43

The internet is such a strange place. On the one hand, it is filled more knowledge and information than any man could hope to ever fully hold within his entire being no matter how many lifetimes he lives. On the other hand, it is a festering pile of the vilest aspects of humanity collected in an ever-growing pit of divisiveness and despair. It is the black and white with little of the gray of reality, and it slowly leaks its ideology into the real world, coiling everyone in its terrible grip to ensure that patience and focus will no longer exist, leaving all peoples pliable to the ravages of the next new and horrifying thing that it can conjure. Without warning, it can present to you something wondrous and good, only to ruthlessly tear away that splendor with hate and tragedy. The internet is a strange and insidious place, yet that is where my little brother was setting up his livelihood, it seemed.

It was time that I finally sat down with Greg to discuss this matter fully.

At dinner one evening, the pair of us sat together to eat at the kitchen table. It was an ordinary scene that we had grown accustomed to all too easily. We switched off meal duties every now and then, but more often than not I was the one cooking healthy homemade meals while Greg was the one ordering takeout. This evening was one of those nights where Greg had decided to take on the duty of “preparing” our dinner, so we were eating Chinese takeout. It was fine. I have nothing against eating Chinese takeout every now and then, and I somewhat remember thinking that it was a nice change of pace since we hadn’t had it for a while.

“Greg, I need to know,” I said without warning as we both finished our food.

He hummed curiously, “What about?”

“About whatever it is you do all day.” It felt good getting straight to the point instead of trying to navigate the conversation into the correct direction. I wanted to slam the accelerator down so hard that there would be no way for Greg to sidestep the conversation or direct it in a completely opposite direction.

Greg cringed, “Are you mad about the confetti in the backyard?”

I blinked, “The what?” I looked behind me, out towards the backdoor and the creeping darkness of night that crawled from the east. I could barely make out anything, but upon closer observation, I could see it. There wasn’t just confetti on the ground, but the artificial sparkle of glitter as well. Even with my foot pressed hard on the gas, he still managed to put an obstacle in the way for my conversation vehicle to slam into.

“Please don’t be mad!”

I raised a hand to my forehead, kneading the flesh there before turning back around. “That’s not actually what I was meaning, but now that I know it’s there, I’m kind of hoping you’ll clean that up tomorrow.”

“I will!” It was hard for me to judge his sincerity, but I figured that he would do as I asked if he was worried about raising my ire again. “I promise it’ll be cleaned up before you get home!”

“That’s all I want,” I sighed. I really did think that I could get straight to the point without Greg putting a distraction into the mix, but he managed to put a distraction in so effortlessly that I wondered if there would ever come a time when I could get straight to my point without him derailing my expectations.

“Okay, good, then I’ll be going,” he said, picking up his garbage as his body rose. Apparently he thought our conversation was over now and he could leave.

“Nope, we’re not done,” I said quickly, reaching over the table to grab his wrist and pull him back.

“But you said that’s all you wanted.” He was confused, which I should have anticipated.

“What I meant was that all I ever want from you is that you pick up after yourself,” I replied as Greg returned to his seat. “I already said that I wanted to talk to you about something unrelated to the confetti in the yard.”

“Oh,” he said quietly, adjusting himself in his seat. “Are we going to have a bad talk?”

I shook my head, smiling lightly, “Not at all. I just want to know what you do all day when you’re not working. I know you play video games and make weird videos, but that can’t be all you do.”

He began by making a long sound that indicated that he was trying his best to think, looking at a spot behind my location. It was a spot that was higher than my head but below the ceiling. Perhaps he was looking at the doorframe or the little floral accent that I displayed above the door. Whatever it was, it was his focus for organizing the words he wanted to say. “I dunno if saying what I do’ll make much sense to you, since you’re really bad at computer and internet stuff.”

I smirked, “Try me.”

He was clearly taken aback by my response, which meant that his focus lowered to meet my eyes. When that grew too uncomfortable, his eyes moved to look at my shoulder instead. “Let’s see, um... well... First of all, I do make music. I make lots of songs, actually.”

“That’s good!”

“And me and some friends I’ve made at work go out and film dumb music videos for the songs,” he continued. “With the money I’ve been saving, I bought a really nice camera and video editing software so my videos look really good even if they’re really dumb.”

“If you’re making them with all of your passion, then they’re not dumb,” I smiled reassuringly.

“Oh, no, they’re really dumb. You’d hate them, but it’s the kind of stuff I like,” he laughed. “I even made one where I dressed Jason up in funny clothes and filmed him hopping around in them!”

“That sounds incredibly on-brand for you,” I grinned as I moved to rest my chin in my hand. The image of that poor old frog hopping around in clothes was wholesome in my mind, and certainly not an unfamiliar image. Jason Funderburker was extremely used to being put in silly costumes at this point, as it was something Greg did quite frequently. I thought he would eventually grow out of dressing up his pet frog like that, but instead the practice had staying power in much the same way that people dress their dogs in clothes. I suppose thinking of it like that makes it seem a bit more normal, considering Jason is a pet frog and people like putting pets in human clothes. “Is that why I’ve never seen any of these videos you claim to be making?”

He nodded, “Yeah, but that’s not all that I’m doing. I do this thing called livestreaming where people can watch me do stuff. Sometimes they watch me performing songs, but mainly people watch me play video games.”

“So Dipper was right,” I laughed. “That really _is_ what you’ve been doing all night!”

Greg’s eyes grew wide in disbelief, “You mean you knew?! How did you guys figure it out? I thought I was finally being good at keeping a secret...”

“I told Dipper about my observations of what you do daily, and he guessed that you were probably doing this livestreaming thing. I can’t believe he guessed correctly! I don’t really understand what it means to do livestreams, or how there’s even an audience for it, but I’m glad it’s something that you enjoy doing.”

“Yeah!” He laughed, and I could sense that he was relieved to have finally told me about all of this.

“Dipper also told me that what you’re doing could be quite lucrative,” I hummed. “Are you making any money off of it yet, or is it still just a passion project?”

The smile on Greg’s face dimmed a little as he shook his head, “I’m getting a little extra money, but it’s not a whole lot yet.” I snorted out a breath and he quickly added, “B-but the store is looking for full-time employees, so hopefully I can make more money soon! I already turned in my application and everything!”

I smiled at him gently and nodded, “Well, at least you’re being proactive.” It was beginning to look like moving in with Dipper anytime soon was going to be impossible. “I’m glad you’re working hard for your dream, even if I don’t really understand it.”

Greg laughed boisterously, “I don’t think you’ll ever understand modern technology!”

“My lack of understanding hasn’t impeded my life too much,” I shrugged.

“Oh, but if you wanna move in with Dipper, then you totally should,” he grinned, leaning back in his seat.

My mouth struggled to make any words as my brain short circuited. How did he even know that that was a thing I wanted to do? I was gobsmacked that he knew that at all. Looking back on it, though, it seemed kind of obvious. I kept taking things from my house and moving them over to Dipper’s house, and Greg’s things were slowly supplanting what I took away. Though much of the décor was still very much my own, a lot of little things like books and records had slowly disappeared from the house. Even my favorite blanket had been given a new home at Dipper’s house, resting on his large and comfy sofa so that we could both share its soft warmth as we cuddled and kissed instead of watching television. Of course Greg knew, but I was too blinded by my own thoughts to realize how obvious it was at the time.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said, that grin still firm on his lips. “I know I don’t make enough to pay all the bills for this house, but we can figure out how to make it so that all of us can live happily, ‘cause I know you wanna be with Dipper and I’m the one who’s holding ya back. I don’t wanna be the reason you’re not with the one you love most in the whole universe. We just gotta figure things out. We’ll probably have to ask Dipper about this, too, since it’s his house that you wanna live in, but we’ll work things out and you’ll be happy with Dipper all day, every day!”

The coherency and level-headedness of Greg’s words, as ineloquent as they were, astonished and astounded me. I sat there with my mouth silently agape for the longest time, incapable of knowing how best to respond to his statements. I had no idea that I could be so easily flummoxed by Greg speaking in such a grounded manner, even if the wording was a bit clunky. “I, um... Yes. Yes, that sounds reasonable. Yes. We’ll talk with Dipper and make some kind of arrangement. You, uh... focus on getting that full-time position. Yes. I think... yes. Yeah. Good.”

“Really?” Confusion returned to Greg’s expression as his grin faded a little.

I laughed and nodded, “Yes, really. I think if all of us figure things out together, then we can possibly negotiate a fortuitous outcome for all of us. Maybe.”

“Only maybe?”

“Well,” I sighed. Being wishy-washy on this would likely end in nothing happening, so decisive action was likely called for. I sat up straight in my chair and replied, “Okay, yes, we’ll absolutely make sure that a fortuitous outcome is reached for all of us. Period. Full stop. We’re going to make this happen.” Though a part of me felt like this was too much certainty and that it would somehow end in doom and destruction, there was more elation and hope in my heart than I had anticipated from this forced optimism. If we all worked towards a harmonious goal, then everything would work out swimmingly, I hoped.

“Yeah!” Enthusiasm filled Greg’s voice and he threw a triumphant fist into the air, “We’re gonna make this happen and it’s gonna be great! Brother o’ mine, you just gotta keep your head up and we’ll absolutely make everything work out!”

I chuckled, relaxing back into my chair, a bit shocked by my own momentary enthusiasm. “Yeah... I think this might actually turn out okay in the end.”


	44. Chapter 44

Wirt finally had the conversation with Greg that he needed to, and that conversation morphed into the three of us having a long chat about Wirt moving in with me and Greg being given ownership of Wirt’s house and all of the complications and minutiae associated with all of that. This big chat happened while we were all supposed to be playing DD&MD, which derailed the game for a couple hours. I didn’t mind it, but it meant that the game ended up going later than I would’ve liked. I’m not going to document everything we talked about over those couple of hours, since everything clearly worked out in the end, but it sure was a big, long conversation that was more involved than it should’ve been. Even days and weeks after that, we spent a lot of time hashing out details, making phones calls, and working tirelessly towards the goal of Greg living on his own and Wirt being with me.

By the time August arrived, Wirt had officially moved into my home. He didn’t bring much of his big furniture, opting to leave his couch and bed and stuff like that for Greg to use, but he did move his favorite chair, a few antique tables and chairs, and that behemoth of a trunk that he needed my truck for that one time. Other than those big items, he moved a lot of smaller items, too, such as various decorative items that he said would “improve the overall mood and aesthetic” of my home. Whatever weird vintage things and antiques he wanted to bring over, I let him. Wooden boxes and framed postcards and tin model trains and weathered artworks. He left his modern electronics behind for his brother to use, which meant that he brought with him vinyl records and cassette tapes and his tape recorder. Wirt used his honed interior design skills to make sure everything he brought with him was well integrated into my existing décor, and when he was finished giving my house a mini makeover, it looked incredible! His transition into my home appeared so seamless that it was almost like he’d always lived with me.

The first few weeks were a bit of a struggle as we tried to sort out a routine together. Though we’d grown accustomed to spending weekends together, we were now aware of how the other acted during weekdays. I didn’t know this before, but now that we were living together I finally learned why he got up so early on weekends. It’s because he gets up for work at an ungodly hour of the morning. He said that before he was working from home, his goal was to be at work by 7am, but now he starts his workdays at 6am. Who even does that?! 7am is already too early to be at work! It means he gets off earlier and can do stuff around the house and run errands before I get home, but still... No wonder he can’t stay up past 10pm!

Speaking of his work, Wirt had transformed one of the spare bedrooms upstairs into an office, that way we both had our own office spaces that were separate from each other. Unlike the rest of the house, where he’d made sure everything fully combined both of our styles, I let him have free reign over the décor in the bedroom he chose. The room he picked was a room with windows facing south and west, so he could easily track the movement of the sun without it blazing in through the windows in the morning. He set up one of the antique tables he brought, a big wooden desk from the 1920s, and situated it by the south-facing window along with an old wooden desk chair that was also from that era. He put up a bunch of lacy curtains on the windows and old paintings on the walls, settled a couple of old wooden chairs by the door, added a large wooden cabinet with various office supplies in it, and shoved an ornate bookcase along the wall for good measure that he filled with many of his books, both antique and modern. That cabinet is something I don’t really like, but he absolutely adores it; apparently it was owned by a physician in the 1890s and it reeks of old wood and patent medicines. He also has a lot of vintage lamps in there that give the room a warm glow that he accents in the winter months with lit candles and lanterns. I didn’t know he could do it, but he made that singular room look even more like his aesthetic than his entire previous house did. It’s kinda impressive.

After those first few weeks of fumbling around with trying to work out a routine, we started getting used to being together every day instead of just on the weekends. Our weekend routine didn’t change much, but the weekday routine was something that needed a little adjustment. This was my experience that first Monday morning after he’d officially moved in: Wirt’s alarm went off at 5am and he quietly got up without even hitting snooze, which is something he does consistently and I’m a bit jealous that he has this ability. I’m actually fine with his alarm going off that early, since it’s easy for me to ignore an alarm, but once the water in the shower started up, it made it harder for me to get back to sleep. His shower lasted for maybe half an hour, after which he got dressed like he was actually going into the office despite how he was now officially working from home, and then he quietly headed downstairs. I warned him that there are ghosts who frequently loiter in the kitchen, but he gave me a face that read that he didn’t really believe in ghosts, so it wasn’t really that much of a surprise when I heard him yelp from downstairs. I sighed and got out of bed to properly introduce him to the ghosts, who aren’t evil but can be annoying. They’re usually polite. After that, I sluggishly returned to bed and heard Wirt discussing something with the ghosts, likely negotiating some kind of arrangement so that he wouldn’t be spooked at such an early hour when he just wants to make tea. He eventually returned upstairs, sneaking in to give me a kiss on the cheek and an apology for waking me up, and then hid inside his office to start doing whatever it is that he does for a living. He explained it to me once, but he does so many different things that it was hard to really retain that information. It was later on that day when he explained that he starts work so early in the morning because he works with clients on the East Coast, so he starts his day early enough so he can do correspondence with those clients without the time zone difference interfering with his work. His explanation was all very business-y, but I got the gist of it. We worked out that him taking a shower so early in the morning messes up my sleep schedule, since my work is done in _this_ time zone, so one of our first compromises was that Wirt would take a shower after I got up, which meant that he would have to shower during his break. It was a simple compromise, and Wirt didn’t mind it, since he tended to work through his breaks normally and this meant that he was finally taking a break like he was supposed to.

As my birthday rolled around, Wirt and I decided to take a week off from work as a vacation, but this time we didn’t go anywhere fancy or exotic. Instead, we stayed at home and relaxed, still getting ourselves used to the new living situation. Thankfully, Mabel chose not to have a big party for our birthday, but she and our parents did come up to visit during our birthday week. They didn’t stay at the house, instead opting to stay at a motel in town so they wouldn’t be bothering us, which I wholly appreciated. Both grunkles tagged along for various relaxing activities such as fishing on the lake, going hiking through the woods, eating at local restaurants, and seeing a movie. Mabel seemed a bit bummed at the lack of a big party, but I reassured her that we could have a big party next year, which made her perk up instantly. Greg even showed up one day, though it was mainly for the opportunity to hang out with Mabel. One of the best things to come out of that week, aside from having a relaxing time hanging out with my family, was that I asked Ford to join my DD&MD campaign and he agreed to it! His character is a bit transient, since he and Stan are still adventuring now and then (though not on the high seas for a while), but we created an in-game reason for his character to only be in the party part of the time.

Life eventually settled down, as life tends to do. Fall came, which led to my family visiting once again for Thanksgiving, as well as Greg coming over to join in the fun, too. When Christmas arrived on Thanksgiving’s heels, Greg and Wirt flew out to visit their family again, with Wirt having to explain this new development in his life to his parents. Upon his return, he said it went over as well as expected, which meant that there were some awkward comments that he had to forcibly smile through. That whole time he was gone, I wondered if he would ever allow me to finally meet his folks, but I knew that it was still too early in Wirt’s eyes for that kind of interaction. He always plays this waiting game, hoping to not inconvenience others when it’s never an inconvenience to begin with. He’s always done this, but for the time being I accepted it because I knew that bringing it up would be inappropriate at the time. Though he’d told me about his parents and his extended family and the complicated feelings he had towards them all, I still didn’t know what they looked like beyond my blurry memories from the beginning of my teenage years. He was still keeping them a secret and he didn’t seem to even realize it.

I didn’t mind, though. I was just glad that he was being more open with me about his relationship with his parents instead of letting all those emotions tear away at him all the time. It seemed like a relief for him to vent his frustrations about his parents to me, unfiltered and raw as those frustrations were, and I made sure to be as patient with him as I could be. After a while, those frustrations melted away as he increased contact with his parents via phone calls that he made semi-frequently, and it looked as though he was finally feeling a bit more comfortable with them. They were no longer a boogieman for him to fear, since they were just normal parents who needed to hear from their son every now and then so they could better understand his feelings and situation.

The first time I got to interact with his parents was during a random phone call they were having with Wirt that was lasting way longer than usual. I’m not really sure why it was such an extended call, but Wirt nervously came up to me and handed me his phone, saying that his step-dad wanted to talk to me. I could’ve easily said no, but I felt like I needed to take the phone and say something to the man on the other end, so I did. We chatted for a long while about all kinds of things, fishing and camping and other “manly” activities, before putting me on speaker so Wirt’s mom could join in on the conversation for a little bit. It was a pleasant conversation all around, though I can’t remember what all we talked about at the time; it was all just mundane stuff, asking me about my job and my degrees and my hobbies. I do remember his mom asking if Wirt and I had had sex yet, but thankfully Wirt’s step-dad rescued me from having to answer such a personal question. When I handed the phone back to Wirt so he could tell his folks goodnight, he seemed surprised at how casual our conversation had been. I told him that his parents seemed like good people, and the shock in his expression was obvious. I think he wanted me to feel that same complicated awkwardness that he felt around them, but when it came down to it, they were just parents who loved their son very much, even if they weren’t the best at showing their affection to him.

I guess this means that I can finally document what happened on my birthday last year...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That cabinet Dipper mentions is a real cabinet. I own that cabinet. It was my great-grandfather's medicine cabinet, which is why it's over a century old. It's a beautiful wooden cabinet that needs a little TLC nowadays, but one thing is definitely for certain: It smells. It smells so bad. I love the smell of old wooden furniture, but the smell of this cabinet is not the smell of old wood. Mom just said it smelled like medicine, but as a child I never thought that medicines had that kind of terrible odor to them. It wasn't until I visited a medical museum that I could finally place what the scent was and it's PATENT MEDICINES. To remind myself of what that odor is, I did what I'm not supposed to do, which is open the cabinet and take in a deep breath. I thought I was gonna die. I love the historical value of this piece of furniture, but I'd get rid of it in a heartbeat just to get the smelly thing out of my house. Otherwise, it's a neat conversation piece.


	45. Chapter 45

Life settled over the course of living with Dipper for that first year. All of our practice over the weekends had helped us with easing into our eventual full integration into each other’s lives. Those daydreams of living in Dipper’s home were now a reality fixed firmly into the soil, and we each seemed to ravish in the enjoyment of it. We established routines as our lives became fully entwined, and it reminded me of how simple it was for the pair of us to find our ground when we had stayed the week at Crescent Lake. It quickly felt like we had never lived apart from each other at all, which wasn’t at all surprising as much of our relationship was smooth in its progress. The tree that was our relationship kept growing stronger and stronger as we slowly and carefully cultivated it together. It was wonderful waking up to Dipper every morning, watching the slow rise and fall of his body with each delicate breath he took as he slumbered. I’m always tempted to kiss him awake, to whisper my fondness to him in his ear, but I know that doing so would throw off the rhythm of his day. He needs his rest, and thus I simply watch him for a few moments in the darkness, cherishing his soft breathing as the morning moon highlights each curve of his body. For that whole first year it felt like I was dreaming, even though I knew that I was awake and that he was truly lying there next to me as his mind filled with fantastical dreams that I would never know. It was all so dreamlike, and oftentimes I would wonder if I would someday wake and find myself alone and my heart empty because he was never real, yet every morning I would wake to find him there and feel relief glide swiftly through me. If the Unknown was to take away this reality from me and I again find myself back in that dark and terrifying wood, then I feared that now would be the time for it. There was always that fear lurking at the back of my mind, but now I could sense it looming closer to the surface, ready to snatch all the happiness that I had found.

But I didn’t let those dark thoughts consume me.

Instead, I focused on living my life as merrily as possible with the person I loved most in the world. There was no reason for me to focus on such dark and sorrowful thoughts when the world around me felt so delightfully warm. Dipper was the light that I had been seeking for so many years, and now that I gazed upon the glory of his guiding starlight, it pierced through me with all its gentle warmth. His light is something I truly cherish, especially when the darkest of thoughts prickle at the back of my mind.

Soon after we started living together, whispers of marriage fluttered around us wherever we went, but we paid the whispers little mind. Dipper had mentioned that he’d like to get married someday, and I had mentioned similarly to him whenever the subject was broached, yet we both were of the opinion that there wasn’t a need to hurry it along. However, this didn’t mean that neither of us was contemplating it at all. On the contrary, once the idea of it had been placed into my head, it became an incessant hum that overpowered even the darkest of my ordinarily bleak thoughts. It bothered me so much, in fact, that I secretly obtained Dipper’s ring size while he was asleep one morning and spent weeks stopping into jewelry stores while out running errands. The thought plagued me so often and so persistently that I ended up secretly buying rings while out on my errands one sunny afternoon in June of last year and proceeded to keep those rings on my person at all times, just in case the occasion arose when I felt it would be an appropriate time to propose to Dipper, those rings burning a hole in my pocket each day that they rested there while they waited to see daylight again. It was a quiet obsession that slowly ate at my sanity as I continually ran scenarios through my head, both grounded and fantastical in how they manifested in my mind. I don’t know why I let it consume me so completely, or why I kept having every nightmare run through my mind without being checked. I knew that deep down, no matter how badly I messed up proposing to him, that he would ultimately say “yes” even if I made a fool of myself. Which I fully anticipated doing, as well. I anticipated messing up and embarrassing the both of us in some random public setting in front of hundreds of people who we would never meet again, but those anonymous people would quietly judge us for the rest of their lives, remembering us as the idiots who made a public spectacle that was ill-timed and ill-planned. I hated thinking those thoughts.

For Dipper’s birthday last year, we decided to visit Seattle. This was Dipper’s idea entirely, as he wanted the opportunity to explore all of the haunted places that existed within the city as research for his podcast. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of inserting work into what was otherwise pleasure, but he adored doing research for his podcast, so I allowed him this opportunity. The prospect of going to Seattle to visit its haunted theaters and pubs and the like made him giddy as the day of our flight neared. He even decided that we should stay at a haunted hotel, which was something I was decidedly _not_ looking forward to. We already were dealing with ghosts in our own house, so having to deal with ghosts while not even at home seemed like madness in its own right. “But these are _different_ ghosts,” he insisted with childish glee, trying his hardest to convince me that this was a good idea. We ended up staying at the creepy haunted hotel, if only because I relented upon seeing Dipper’s excitement. He can so easily persuade me with an expression of pure joy and the twinkle of delight behind his eyes.

As I had been doing everyday now, I brought the rings with me, hiding them away in my messenger bag before we boarded our flight up to Seattle. Proposing on an airplane seemed like a dumb move, so I instead frequently checked my bag to make sure that the rings were secure inside. I had packed quite a few items in my bag beyond just the rings, and I needed constant visual confirmation that everything was safe and secure. Dipper paid no mind to this, likely thinking that this was some kind of nervous ritual of mine that I did during every flight to take my mind off of how we were in a levitating metal bullet soaring through the sky at impossible height and that we could easily plummet down as quickly as we had ascended and our lives would be immediately snuffed out by the collision with the ground. Honestly, I’ve never given much thought to that. Planes are quite safe.

The room we had in the creepy haunted hotel was actually not creepy or haunted. It was a lovely room in a lovely hotel that had more stories to its name than stories to its height. Nevertheless, Dipper loved the ambience of it and I greatly enjoyed watching him set up his strange ghost hunting contraptions. He laid everything out each evening, and each morning he hoped that he had recorded something. Neither of us would know until he looked through the footage when we got home, but for now he was filled with childlike enthusiasm at the hope of there being evidence recorded on any of his many devices.

I would eventually grow tired at all of this ghost nonsense as the trip wore on. I love Dipper, truly I do, but sometimes his enthusiasm when it comes to the paranormal can be exhausting. Worse yet was that I was made to carry much of his paranormal arsenal as we went on ghost tours nearly every evening. Thankfully, our days were mainly spent exploring the city like normal tourists, hitting up the local tourist sites and eating local cuisine. If it was nonstop ghosts all day long, I think I might have thrown those engagement rings into the Seattle Underground, never to be seen again.

Speaking of the Seattle Underground, which was something that Dipper was most excited about seeing, we ended up exploring that on our third day in the city. Apparently Dipper had explored something similar in Portland some years ago, and he was hoping to see how the underground in Seattle compared in both historical value and spooky vibes. From what I had read, it was all quite interesting how the roads had been raised and the city rose with the roads, leaving the original city below the newer one to rot as the poor and those of ill repute made the dark tunnels below their home. This wasn’t necessarily a ghost tour, though it was meant to evoke that kind of chilling atmosphere simply by its reputation. Of all the tours we had taken on that trip, this was the one that I enjoyed the most due to its reliance on historical fact rather than sensational ghost stories. Despite this not truly being a ghost tour, Dipper still insisted on bringing some of his ghost hunting gear, which I was carrying in my messenger bag, the rings still tucked into a pocket deep inside it. Even with all his ghost hunting gadgets coming and going from the bag, Dipper had yet to notice the rings that were stowed so neatly within it. For that, I was glad.

Along this particular tour, there were a few places where the guide let us roam around for five to ten minutes to peruse the locale before we moved on. There was one location that Dipper seemed particularly interested in, due to some rumor he had heard about supernatural activity, so he was wandering around with a device that had some blinking lights on it. The blinking lights indicated when an apparition was nearby, or so that’s what he explained to me. Whether he could capture a ghost with that thing was debatable.

“Are you finding anything?” I casually asked as I kept near him in case he needed me to pull out another little device for him to wave in the air.

“Not really,” he mumbled. “I’m looking to see if there’s anything here that can debunk the claims of seeing the ghost of a man in this corner.” The lights on the device flickered. “There’s something here, but I don’t think it’s anything supernatural.”

I hummed and nodded. “This tour isn’t particularly spooky.”

“I thought as much,” he sighed as he pulled himself up, stretching as his back cracked from the movement. “It doesn’t make it any less interesting, though. Knowing the history of a location is important for understanding the folklore of it. Ghost stories and urban legends are a kind of folklore, after all.”

“That’s true,” I said. He handed me the meter he was using and I put it back in the bag. “Oh, but I do have an unrelated question.”

“You do?” He didn’t seem to be paying attention as he lurked in the corner where he had been waving that device, pulling a notebook from his pocket and jotting down something on it.

“Yeah,” I replied, hovering near him. I glanced at the words he was writing, but none of the words made sense to me despite everything being written in plain English. “I was just wondering if you’re still thinking about getting married some day. That’s all. It’s not important.”

He laughed and pulled out another little device from his pocket, looked at it as he hovered it over the location he was interested in, then shoved it back into his pocket as he continued writing things down. “I dunno, that seems kinda important, but it’s not like you’re asking me to marry you right now, right?”

I let out a soft word, only to shake my head at the word I’d said. Dipper didn’t seem to hear it, so I started over, “What if I said that I was?” My voice sounded a lot more confident than I actually felt at the time.

Dipper immediately stopped his note-taking and turned to stare at me in disbelief. He didn’t say anything, his mouth open slightly as he watched me silently. I took this opportunity to open up my bag again, sifting through the odd gizmos that Dipper had stored in there as I searched for the rings that I had hidden within it. Dipper’s body inched closer as he watched me curiously, his notebook and pen having returned to their home inside the pocket of his cargo shorts while my nervous and shaking hands retrieved the rings I had stowed away with me for all this time.

The floor was dusty and ancient beneath our feet and the ceiling was low and dark. I didn’t want to kneel completely onto the dirty floor, so I hovered my knee above it as I presented the pair of rings to him, his expression shifting strangely as he saw what I held. The lighting was poor, despite how daylight streamed down on us in orange and yellow hues through bits of glass embedded in the ceiling that functioned as the only windows to the world above. Dipper looked down at me, baffled and awed at what was happening. Honestly, I felt a bit befuddled by my awkward choice of proposal location, but here I was, proposing to my boyfriend in an underground flophouse while a handful of tourists looked on in curiosity. It was a wonder that my anxiety didn’t overwhelm me at all, or perhaps I had gone to another plane beyond this reality where anxiety and all other emotions were numb and void.

“Mason Pines,” I said carefully, though I could tell that the words were shaky as they left my mouth, “will you marry me?” The question landed deftly against the barren walls and floor and ceiling, and the people around us were muttering hushed whispers to each other. In my chest, my heart thumped heavily in anticipation. I wanted desperately to have assumed correctly that Dipper would say yes, no matter how poorly timed my proposal was.

He stared at me quietly for a long moment before a gentle smile curved across his lips and he pulled me up from the ground, making sure that I was steady on my feet again. “Of course I’ll marry you,” he said with a chuckle before he stepped close and kissed me. There was faint applause and cheering from around us, our small audience congratulating us in this intimate space we occupied. After we pulled apart from our kiss, I awkwardly slipped a ring onto his finger, and he did the same for me with that ring’s twin. It was only now that my body felt the urge to quake and quiver, and Dipper astutely knew that he needed to hug me close to him, just for a moment. Just so that my nerves could be calmed after having just done _that_.

Shortly after that display, the tour resumed and the members of the tour, including the tour guide, congratulated us. Our tour guide said that was the second time he had witnessed a proposal on his tour, which made me feel less weird about pulling such a strange stunt. It felt good to finally get it out of my system, and I kept finding that I was looking down at the engagement ring on my finger, smiling fondly at it. Whenever my gaze found itself trained on Dipper, I noticed that he was doing much the same. It felt surreal that I had managed the courage to do it, and now that I had done it, I kept looking at our hands to make sure that I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing.

The rest of the tour continued without incident, and neither of us encountered a ghost that evening.

However...

“I recorded all of that,” Dipper said quietly after he got out of the shower that evening. His hair was still damp, but he was in his pajamas and ready for bed.

“What?” I asked, mainly because I hadn’t heard what he said.

“Your proposal,” he clarified as he sat down next to me on the bed. I had gotten into my pajamas as he showered and was reading a book that I’d brought with me while the television played mindlessly as background noise. “My voice recorder was on during the tour. I recorded the entire thing.”

I quickly set my book down on my lap and stared straight at him in horror. “You’re joking, right?” I hoped he was.

He shook his head, smirking, “Nope, that’s not a joke at all. We have physical evidence of your proposal that we can listen to whenever we want!”

I groaned and went back to reading my book while he chuckled, settling in under the covers next to me and laying light kisses on my shoulder. “I’m not going to do anything with that audio unless you want me to. I’m just glad we have a recording of it that we can listen to in the future, even if it’s a little embarrassing.”

“Like how our parents have baby pictures of us as blackmail?”

He hummed, “Oh, yeah... I guess it’s something we can let our kids listen to, if we ever have kids.”

“Kids?!” The thought had never entered my mind before.

“Or dogs,” he grinned before planting a smooch on my cheek. “But that’s not for a long time. Now we have to worry about wedding planning, don’t we?”

I forcibly shoved the idea of children out of my mind, returning myself to the present. “Yeah, I guess that’s the next step, isn’t it?”

We didn’t talk anymore about it that evening, but for the rest of that year we would. We’re still technically planning for it, though the date of the wedding is quickly approaching. Even with all the planning happening, I have still found time to write this. I have no idea if I will keep writing this after the wedding. Originally, this was just to be a space for me to muse on my relationship with Dipper as a kind of exercise. I started writing this in stages, beginning a few months after restarting our friendship when he moved to Gravity Falls, but now it has morphed into something else. It has become an archive of how I found Dipper again, yes, but also an archive of how we fell in love again so easily, as though time had never sent us apart. Somehow, our affection for each other grew even deeper than it did when we were teenagers in the haze of a blurry summer memory. To think that all of this started from a single phone call a few years ago! It’s incredible how the march of time can make things both distant and close, depending on how that time was spent. I have built so many fond memories with Dipper that it is nearing a point where those memories of our time together are outnumbering the memories without him. I can no longer picture my life without Dipper in it. In my visions of the future, Dipper is there with me, experiencing everything that I experience. I still have those stray ugly thoughts that this life may be a lie that the Unknown has conjured for me, but even if it is a lie, it’s the most beautiful lie that I could ever indulge in.

In another month, we’ll be married, and months and years on from that, who knows. The only certainty is that Dipper will be there beside me, his guiding light there for me to follow like the constellation that speckles his forehead. It seems that the Golden Son will marry a different kind of Star, but a Star nonetheless. They will both shine brightly, even if they shine from the Earth below their feet, as they need only shine for each other. The Golden Son now wants for nothing else beyond the happiness of this, the human he loves so much, and their love will outshine all who live in the Sky.


	46. Chapter 46

Wirt’s proposal came out of the blue, and the fact that he had rings prepared was also a bit of a shock. I don’t remember going to more than maybe one jewelry store with him and I never told him my ring size, yet he had a ring sized for my finger and it was immediately ready to slip right onto that finger. I was absolutely stunned. It was as though a well of confidence he never fully realized before drew forth out of him and he just... _did it_! Right _there_! In front of a bunch of people we didn’t know! He trembled a little while he did it, but I didn’t get the sense that it was from anxiety or fear. It seemed more like exhilaration at the desire to finally propose to me. Saying I was shocked is an understatement, but it’s the only way I can really describe the feeling.

I’m still a bit shocked that this is even real. We’d talked about marriage in passing, but having it be real and actually happening is something I never thought would be possible. I’ve been living in disbelief for months now, like living in the best dream I could ever imagine. It’s surreal, but in a really good way.

After we returned from Seattle, we had to inform literally everyone that we were now engaged. Or at least _I_ needed to. I let Wirt decide for himself when he would tell his folks about this new development. He definitely told Greg almost immediately after our return, though he seemed both reluctant and embarrassed to do so. It wasn’t embarrassment over being engaged, but embarrassment at having so much attention thrust upon him. This is why he doesn’t like parties, after all. At least he didn’t have to worry about his coworkers asking him questions since he’s working from home. My only worry was that he would wait until the wedding invites were sent out for his parents to finally learn we were engaged, or even wait until the day before the wedding to tell them, assuming he bothered telling them at all. Honestly, that last possibility was that one I feared the most, considering how bad he is when it comes to what he considers confrontation, especially when it comes to talking with his parents about anything that’s important. To his credit, he ended up only waiting about a week before calling them and telling them the good news, but I definitely had my worries and they weren’t completely unfounded given his history. After that, he left it up to his parents to tell the rest of his extended family about our engagement, which seemed a little unfair of him but I didn’t press him on the issue. If this was something his parents were willing to do for him and he was comfortable with it, then I was okay with letting it happen regardless of my own feelings about it.

This meant that Thanksgiving last year was a bit livelier than usual, as more family members came to visit than normal. Wirt took to the increase in bodies in our house fairly well, despite disappearing for couple of hours after eating as a kind of cool down period. Whenever anyone asked me where he was during that time, I just said that he was out for a bit. I knew that he needed his alone time to recharge, even if it was just for a little while. One thing was for sure, though, it was definitely more than a little overwhelming with so many family members I barely ever saw dropping in to catch a glimpse of my fiancé in the flesh. Greg and Mabel took the initiative when I popped out of the party to check on Wirt, making sure to tell their cheerful stories about how Wirt and I met and fell in love without either of us there to fact check their stories until after they’d been told. We fixed that mess later, but for the moment Wirt and I sat together in his office, watching the weak autumn sunlight stream through the barren trees.

“She’s lovely even when her light is withering,” he said quietly, his eyes refusing to turn away from the delicate blue of the sky above. “I’ll miss her while she’s gone during the winter.”

“She’ll be back when spring comes,” I replied gently. I’ve gotten used to referring to the sun as a woman and the moon as a man, as strange as that seemed not too long ago. “She’ll be right there, watching us when the May comes.”

Wirt had decided that we should get married on May 1st, to celebrate the coming of summer and as a way for us to easily remember our anniversary, since it’ll be on May Day. He explained to me all kinds of ancient folk traditions involved on that day and I did some research about it as well, but in truth we just wanted a day that we could easily remember that wasn’t either of our birthdays or a holiday. I knew a couple from work who got married on Independence Day, not because they were particularly patriotic but because it guaranteed that they’d get their anniversary off from work every year. As interesting an idea as that was, Wirt and I both agreed that pulling our loved ones away a holiday they would ordinarily have all to themselves was way too selfish. For us, May 1st just seemed like a good day. The weather would be warm, but not too warm, and the sun would be there to greet us both. It just made sense.

“She’s always at her most beautiful after her winter rebirth, isn’t she?” He smiled at this, relaxing into his seat. He was in his desk chair while I was in one of the spare chairs, its legs creaking with every little movement I made.

I nodded, though I really didn’t know. Up until recently, I hadn’t paid too much attention to the daytime sky. I was much more focused on looking at the stars, searching for whatever strange phenomenon or passing cryptid that came by. The supernatural and the paranormal tend to exist in the darkness, but Wirt lives completely in the daylight.

Wirt let out a sigh, turning his attention away from the window to glance at me. “We should probably go join everyone downstairs again,” he said glumly.

“We don’t have to just yet,” I smiled at him, hoping that I was being reassuring enough. “If you’re not ready, then you’re not ready. They’re all gonna be down there until the game’s over, anyway.”

He smiled a small, lopsided smile, “I’m sorry that I do this every time.”

I shook my head, “It’s okay, really. You don’t need to apologize. Honestly, I kinda like having a breather like this. I didn’t even know that doing this was an option. I could’ve avoided all kinds of awkward party situations if I just, you know, hid somewhere for a bit to gather my thoughts.”

A soft laugh left his lips, his smile still small, “I’m just glad that I have good company for this kind of retreat.”

“It does make me wonder what’s gonna happen during our wedding reception, though,” I laughed lightly.

“Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “I’m already planning out how that’ll work out!”

“Of course you are,” I laughed with him. “But there is one thing I wanna ask, if that’s okay?”

He hummed, leaning back in his chair, “And what’s that?”

“When will I finally meet your parents?”

It was a question I’d asked a few times before, but now it was starting to feel more urgent. Beyond that one time I talked to them on the phone, I hadn’t had any further contact with Wirt’s parents at all. I was glad that he told his parents that we were getting married, but I had this nagging worry that I would only end up meeting them in person on the day of the wedding, which felt incredibly wrong. I had a feeling that that wouldn’t happen, but that worry was still there. I just wanted reassurance that my worry wouldn’t become a reality.

Again, Wirt breathed a heavy sigh and his sight drifted out the window. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It’s up to them, really.”

I didn’t like that answer, but I accepted it anyway. “All right. I just hope that it’s sooner rather than later.”

“It will be,” he mumbled.

We sat there silently for a little bit, Wirt’s attention elsewhere while I sat there watching him. When he’d gotten his fill of staring out the window, he finally stood up and we both returned to downstairs to rejoin my family. Instead of watching the football game, they had all decided to play party games and we immediately got drawn into the fray. It was pretty fun, but that worry still nagged at me despite how much fun I was having.

Sometime after Thanksgiving, I overheard Wirt getting annoyed with his parents on the phone over how we’d decided to have a nondenominational wedding instead of a Christian one, and I repeatedly heard him tell his parents that it wouldn’t be fair for us to have a Christian wedding because I’m not Christian. Honestly, I didn’t care as long as we had legal documentation proving our marital status, but this seemed to be his way of distancing himself from his parents’ religious roots. I didn’t like being his scapegoat. However, it was all of this that made his parents decide that they needed to see me in person over the Christmas holiday, especially now that the date of the wedding was looming ever closer.

I finally got to meet Greg and Wirt’s parents.

This meant that I also got to see their childhood home. It’s a quaint suburban house that looks like it was built in the 1950s, but I’d have to ask Wirt for confirmation on that. That’s his expertise, after all. Wirt’s room had been converted into a generic guestroom after he moved out, but Greg’s room was otherwise intact due to his parents being uncertain about their youngest son’s future. It was like they prepared a backup location for him just in case internet fame wasn’t all it boasted to be. This meant that Greg got to sleep in his own bedroom, while Wirt and I got to stay in the guestroom.

That first day when meeting his parents, they seemed completely the opposite of the tyrants Wirt had set them up to be. After picking us up from the airport, we had an amiable discussion about fairly normal things. Wirt’s parents were just kind people who wanted their son to have a good life, just as I’d assumed they were. They were open and honest with how they presented themselves to me, and I didn’t put on airs for them, either. I presented to them as myself, despite how Wirt wanted so badly for me to dress nicely for them and act as proper as possible. I didn’t need to lie to them; all I needed to do was prove that I was a normal guy who just so happened to be madly in love with their son. I wanted to show that I wasn’t a threat or a stereotype; I wanted them to know that I was just a person who happened to be in love with another person.

And my plan worked, too.

I got along really well from the start with his step-dad, talking to him about electronics because they were having some issues with their TV. I fixed the TV issue pretty quickly, and then moved on to help them with a computer problem, which solidified my status among their ranks as far as Wirt’s step-dad was concerned. I never really considered myself a handyman, but I could become one in an instant if it meant that my ability to watch TV was impeded. If I can build a rocket engine, then I can fix TV. It was that part of my personality that won Wirt’s step-dad over, and he’s honestly a pretty fun and easygoing guy.

Wirt’s mother was a bit more difficult to get through to. She’s sweet on the outside, but I could tell that there was a lot of doubt hidden behind her polite smile. It wasn’t until after we talked more that I could see her doubts slip away. From what Wirt had told me about her, I got the sense that she thrives on stereotypes about anything that’s outside of what she considers normal, which is unfortunate. We had some interesting conversations where she asked me questions about sexuality and sexual identity and all of that; it seemed like she was really trying her best to understand her son, but she didn’t really know how to properly go about doing that. So we had a few discussions where I dispelled some myths for her and she grew a bit more comfortable with me little by little.

After it looked like I’d finally reached through to both of Wirt’s parents, it felt like I could finally relax. If I hadn’t broken the ice from the start by just being myself, I worried that the entire week would’ve been like climbing a mountain in the middle of a blizzard, but both of his parents were open to meeting me and learning what all they could from me and about me, which made the whole trip an overall positive experience. They even had a Christmas gift ready for me, which was really nice of them. It seemed that Wirt’s step-dad latched onto the idea that I like fishing from time to time, so he got me a big tackle box and some lures. And, as Wirt had warned me, we ended up going to church for a Christmas service, his mother quietly weeping while I simply enjoyed the atmosphere of it. I’d been to church before, but never for a holiday service, so it was an interesting experience. Wirt and I held hands through most of it, no one noticing or caring how close we sat next to each other or how fondly we stared at each other. The service itself was lovely, and I felt honored to be part of their tradition that year.

And... I think that’s it.

Well, no, maybe I should explain why I’m even writing all of this. I probably should’ve done this earlier, but I forgot. I was in such a rush to write everything down that I totally spaced leaving room to explain what this project even is.

Shortly after Wirt started living with me, I noticed him writing in a journal. It’s one of those journals I see in book stores all the time that always make me wonder just who’s buying them at all, and now I know the sort of person those journals are meant for. The one Wirt has looks so much like something he would write in, with its faux leather cover imprinted with a beautiful floral design, giving it a sort of vintage vibe. Seeing anyone put pen to paper in this day and age is a bit of a rarity, but seeing him do it so often piqued my curiosity. One day, I took a glance at what he was doing and found that he was writing down everything about us. It was like a memoir and a journal wrapped in one, and I thought that it seemed like a neat idea. I decided that I’d do the same thing, documenting all of my memories about how Wirt and I got together again. I started with that oldest memory of mine because I felt like it was the beginning of the story, and it definitely is. That memory still ebbs back into the forefront of my mind from time to time, just as it did before I met Wirt again. It’s such a vivid memory, and I kind of hope that Wirt remembers it.

I also hope that one day Wirt will show me what he’s written in that journal of his, just as I hope to one day show him what I’ve written... even if what I wrote is on a computer and not on pretty paper in beautiful handwriting. My prose isn’t as nice as his, either, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. I think I’ll print off these pages and wrap them up and give them to him after the wedding. I think he might like that. I hope he likes it.

I still can’t believe it.

In a month, we’ll be married.

It felt impossible for such a long time, and now it’s approaching so quickly that it feels almost like I’m imagining all of this. For years I thought that I’d never see Wirt again, spending so much time regretting how I made the decision to never contact him after that summer. I could have easily gone for another decade or two without ever contacting him, only thinking of him as a faded memory of a summer that felt like a dream. I try not to think about what my life would have been like if I didn’t go through all of that trouble to find him and contact him that one afternoon. I don’t want to think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t made such an effort to bring him back into it. There are infinite universes out there filled with infinite possibilities, and one of those universes contains a version of my life where I never tried to find Wirt again and the thought of that is painful to me. It’s a colorless world where I led a lonely life and died a lonely death. Yet in this universe and in this life, there is color because Wirt is here with me, warm and comforting like an old blanket. This ring on my finger is a promise, after all. It means that we’ll always be here for each other, no matter where the future takes us. There’s always uncertainty, but the only certainty is that Wirt will be there with me. For that reason alone, I’ll hold tight to this universe that I live in and never let go. We’re walking hand-in-hand towards a future of our own design, with the sun shining high above us as she smiles down on the path we walk along together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who stuck with me while I wrote this fanfic! I really appreciated all of your support as it was what drove me to complete it! I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it. You're all so lovely!


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